Pokemon Go players claim “faux subscription” model is becoming pay to win
Niantic/The Pokemon CompanyThe game’s monetization practices are increasingly turning off Pokemon Go fans, which keep the best stuff out of the hands of some fans.
Pokemon Go is a free-to-play game, and you can absolutely have a good time without ever paying a penny. Moving your Pokemon from Pokemon Go to Pokemon Home to another game might result in spending money if you want to do it in bulk, but you only have to do this every few years, if at all.
Niantic monetizes Pokemon Go in different ways, including hiding items and Pokemon expansions behind paywalls, item boxes that often aren’t worth the loot, cosmetics, Remote Raid Passes, Incubators, Incense, Lucky Eggs, restorative items, and tickets for special event rewards.
The research tickets have become a particular point of contention with fans due to how prominent they’ve become and how they offer so much compared to playing the game for free.
NianticPokemon Go players think the game has moved to a fake subscription model for the best content
A user on The Silph Road Reddit created a thread asking fans if they feel like the game has moved to a faux-subscription model, where all the best stuff is hidden behind paywalls. Other users quickly responded with their own grievances about Pokemon Go’s monetization.
“Doesn’t just feel like. This has been growing increasingly true since the remote raid nerf last year. Sad to see,” one user wrote, while another said, “Just milking money out of people too invested in the game to give it up.”
The cost of Pokemon Go is especially bad for people in certain areas: “The funny thing is,” one user wrote, “90% of these tickets are awful value and don’t earn you anything you wouldn’t already get for playing a decent amount, in a decent area.”
“It’s the players who have obligations or live in rural areas that these short events and tickets prey on. That and casual schmucks who buy every single ticket anyways.”
“Yes, also Niantic are desperate since their brain dead decision with remote passes and are now flinging everything at the wall to see what sticks,” one user wrote, blaming the changes to Remote Raid Passes, which was a recurring theme throughout the thread.
Ultimately, Pokemon Go needs to make money to survive, which involves some level of monetization. It’s more a question of whether Niantic will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs or the fanbase is trapped in a sunk-cost fallacy that will keep the bad decisions flowing.