Pokémon Go’s Niantic Finally Responds to HearUsNiantic & Remote Raid Passes
Niantic has remained quiet regarding the Pokemon Go community backlash and the HearUsNiantic hashtag, but they finally offer a response.
Zack Palm 
The Pokémon Go community has been doing their best to get Niantic’s attention the past few weeks following several decisions the company has made to the mobile game. The change that the community had widely responded to was the increase of prices to Remote Raid Passes, making it more difficult for players to join raids they could not find in their local community.
The developer, Niantic, has remained silent for quite some time following the Remote Raid Pass announcement, and despite the Pokémon Go Community’s best efforts, they never received a response. At long last, Niantic has a few comments about this and the HearUsNiantic movement.
Niantic Gives Official Response to Pokémon Go’s HearUsNiantic
This response comes from an exclusive interview showcased by Dot Esports between reporter Adam Newell and Pokémon Go director Michael Sterank and senior producer John Funtanilla; both offered their thoughts on what has been going on and what the team has been seeing on social media.
Steranka says that the team has read everything that goes online, as they’re regularly tagged in these posts. On top of reading everything, Steranka had a personal connection to Remote Raid Passes, adding, “And we’ve been working really hard as a development team to put together a huge slate of new features that players, you know, we hope will enjoy over the course of this year. So, you know, personally speaking, I’m pretty sure I used to do more Remote Raids than 99 percent of your readers, right?”
The decision to make Remote Raid Passes more expensive was a painful one for the Pokémon Go development team, but they’re looking at the overall health of the game and were noticing the type of behaviors that these Remote Raid Passes were influencing that did not support this overall growth, believing it was an unhealthy way to engage with the game as a whole, rather than going out to locate these hard-to-find raids and community members.
In short, Steranka shares that they have no direct response to the HearUsNiantic movement other than that this is a decision that they support, and they hope to bring additional features to Pokémon Go players in the future as the game continues.
Funtanilla echoed Sterank’s comments and said the team is behind these decisions. The team likely won’t be addressing the Remote Raid problems, but they are planning to add more features in Pokémon Go’s future that they hope the community will get behind and find exciting.
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