Pokémon GO’s Accessibility Criticised by Fans

Pokémon GO is a game that is touted by fans for the physical and mental benefits that it gave at the time. The game helped people find a purpose for people with depression and lessened the time people spent sedentarily. However, in recent years, especially in the months after the pandemic lightened, players continually lobby complaints against the devs for poor decision-making. This piece will go over the recent controversies, especially with criticism towards Pokémon GO’s accessibility.

Players Are Tired of Niantic Playing Tug of War with Their Features

Despite all of the good Pokémon GO has accomplished, it has shot those positives in the foot with recent controversies. Before going into that, however, it is important that this piece discusses the good Pokémon has done. In the simplest of terms, Pokémon GO has accomplished this for Pokémon fans:

• Give players a way to bond with and catch their favorite Pokémon in an AR environment.
• Gives players a new way to socialize with other Pokémon fans and motivation to get out with friends and explore.
• Players can also trade and battle with friends while getting physically fit (this update came later, but it is still a huge positive).
• Finally, players can take on GO Rocket, saving and purifying Shadow Pokémon of all types.

All of this is the perfect recipe for immersing oneself in their own Pokémon anime-esque adventures. However, Niantic has not been able to do it all perfectly. This brings us to the meat of the issue. Players, more so now than ever, are tired of feeling like Niantic is using them as unofficial playtesters.

GO has had many bugs, including the Heaven Mode glitch for legendary raids and crashing consistently often. However, players are more incensed about them making the game less accessible.

Niantic is Taking the Game’s Accessibility Backwards Instead of Forward

During the pandemic, Niantic released remote raid passes which allowed players to join raids and help their friends from far away without having to potentially expose themselves. Niantic also increased the spawn radius of Pokemon from 40 to 80. These are changes that fans lauded and helped the game stay alive during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, Niantic enraged players by rolling those features back. While the company did not delete remote raid passes, the amount of money players needed to purchase them saw an increase. This outraged fans by making it harder to connect with long-distance friends.

Supposedly, Niantic did this to stop players from abusing the system and going against the game’s core purpose of getting them outside. And while their point of view is reasonable, there is still plenty of motivation in getting outside, especially when players using the remote passes do less damage.

Lastly, players became enraged to find out that the increased spawn radius was only a bug as a result of a previous update. And that Niantic would be correcting it in the future. Many players, including popular YouTubers such as Mystic7, collectively described it as one of the most L takes of the year.

Conclusion

Pokémon GO’s accessibility is still a major point of criticism among fans. It is sad that both the main games and the side games have shown examples of moving back after making great strides forward. Hopefully, they will be able to course-correct this as the rift between community and company will bring the game down.

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