Niantic reverts “unintended” Pokemon Go Wild Spawn radius increase

Dylan Horetski
pokemon go battle field logo header

Pokemon Go developers Niantic are reverting the “unintended” increase to Wild Spawn interaction distance, despite it reportedly being confirmed by a rep just a day prior.

On June 23, Dexerto wrote about an instance where Pokemon Go trainers were seeing an increase in the distance that they could interact with Wild Spawns in the game.

Many believed it was a bug, although it was reportedly confirmed to be an intended change just days later.

However, Niantic’s Support account on Twitter has confirmed it is an unintended effect of fixing a different bug and is reverting the changes.

Niantic reverts Wild Spawn radius changes

Posted on June 27, Niantic explained why trainers have experienced an increase to the current interaction radius.

“This was the unintended effect of a bug fix intended to improve the Pokémon encounter experience when your device is experiencing GPS drift,” they said.

“While we’re reverting this change, we will take your feedback into consideration as we look to optimize the Pokémon encounter experience in the future.”

Users quickly flooded the replies on the tweet with reactions, and it appears hardly anyone is happy about the change.

“Yikes, weren’t members of the partner program told otherwise? Communication needs to improve about how the game is intended to work,” one user replied.

Another user said: “This is just a huge L and should have been handled way faster if it wasn’t intended.”

“I saw the community happy after some time now… but it was good while it lasted,” a third commented.

This comes just months after Niantic decided to nerf Remote Raids on April 6, 2023, which prompted a boycott and soured the mood of many of its players.

About The Author

Dylan is a Senior Writer for Dexerto with knowledge in keyboards, headsets, and live streaming hardware. Outside of tech, he knows the latest happenings around Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok. Contact Dylan at Dylan.Horetski@Dexerto.com