Tens of thousands ofPokemon GOplayers have been protesting Niantic’s recent changes to the mobile games Remote Raid Passes, which include a price hike and limitation on how many raids a player can do per day. Despite the backlash, the augmented reality company has yet to address the issues, which has forced some players to push back on the decision and contemplate quittingPokemon GOas a whole.
Pokemon GOcommunity ambassador Ali Vongsathianrecently spoke with Game Rant on the concerns that he and his community are facing and what some of them may choose to do if Niantic continues to ignore the problem.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: For our readers, can you tell me a bit about yourself, and when did you start playingPokemon GO?
A:I’ve been playingPokemon GOsince its release in July 2016. I’ve played the game since the start, and I’ve been on this journey of creating a community here in San Diego, a very big community that’s very involved in meeting up in person and raiding. Last year, we gained so much traction that we became one of the community ambassadors forPokemon GO. Our community hosts meetups and things like that. It’s one of the things that we all grew to love and I’m trying to love the game, but Niantic has really, really done a lot of decisions where it really hurts the fan base. It really hurts the community.
In 2021, I had sciatica and the doctor said, “Hey, you have to get out there and start moving again” because I worked at an office job. They said, “Hey, you need to go out there so your sciatica doesn’t start acting up.” Back in 2021, I’m there outside, and I see everyone on their phones and was like, “Oh, I wonder, what’s everyone doing?” And then I’m like, “oh, wow,PokemonGOis still a thing." People were raiding and then people were telling, “Yeah,you can actually raid anywhere at homeor you can be outside, and raid.”
I downloaded the game again because I stopped playing, but then I got it back in. It helped me form friendships from around the world and friendships with people from different parts of San Diego too. That’s what really brought me to the game. A lot of things during that time of Covid, [remote raids] really helped a lot of people more than everyone knew.
Q: You mentioned that you grew a big community over there in San Diego. Are you a content creator or how did you exactly build that community?
A:I lovePokemon, and I don’t want to create content because I feel like at that point it’ll be like a full-time job. I do it because I love the community out here. When I say we create community, we host everything on Discord. Our Discord focuses very heavily onremote raids– that’s how people get access to raids; it’s from our Discord.
And that’s how we really formed traction for our community. Everyone was like, “wow, just join this discord because they know how to host raids, they know how to do raids, and they know how to raid” and it just became a snowball effect where everyone started joining our discord for the raid. Our community was built strongly on that. We also host meet-ups. There’s a meet-up that we do every Wednesday in person, which is called Raid Hour – that’s where most of the time raids are spawning during that hour and that’s where it’s more feasible for people who can’t come out. In regular raiding, it takes almost three to four hours for someone to get normal raids in.
That’s undoable for a lot of people. That’s why thoseWednesday Raid Hourshelp a lot. It’s all limited in that one hour versus if you’re doing it on a regular day, which takes three to four hours and people can’t do that because you have to physically drive to these raids. You have to be present at these raids. You have to wait until the raid hatches at this specific time, then you have to wait until the next raid hatch, and that’s not easy for a lot of people.
That’s why we’re like, “Hey, let’s create a community here on Discord where people can get access to raids, make it easier for them.” That’s where we gained a lot of traction for the community because people wanted to raid, and they didn’t have to go out. You know, it was feasible to them, it was accessible. That’s the one thing that really shaped our community.
Everyone’s like, “Hey, that decision that Niantic made, they didn’t really ask the community” and until this day they’re not hearing us out. It comes with a lot of factors. Like, one if you’re a parent, you didn’t have the time and accessibility to go to these raids. If you’re physically disabled, you cannot go out there. If you are also anti-social, which a lot of people in the game are. If they have social anxiety, they have better relationships online. It took away all those aspects of the game for most people. That’s why it hurts us a lot
Q: How many members are in your Discord?
A:We started the Discord about a year and a half ago, and it was only at 200 members. Now it has 5,800 members. All of us are active members. If you look at our channels, everyone’s up-to-date with the petition…It’s a very active Discord.
Q: This whole change went into effect today. How are you feeling? What are some of the things that people on Discord are saying?
A:Everyone’s super upset about it. They’re trying to share the petition that I created. So I created a petition because I told everyone, “Hey dude, if I don’t do it, no one else is going to do it.” I’d rather do something than do nothing. And for me, it’s like, “Hey, I know you guys don’t think it’ll make a change, but we got to try it.”
I want to love the game, but I just can’t. When a company makes a decision, they should really hear the community before doing anything. They just kind of said, “Hey, this is how we’re going to rebalance the game. We’re going to limit raids to five a day, andwe’re going to increase the price by double, and we were like, “how does that rebalance the game?”
If you’re going tolimit raids to five… a more feasible number would be 50 or a higher number because a lot of people raid more than five times. And then not just that, they’re making it double the price to do real remote raids. For me, that’s not a rebalance at all. That just seems like a company that just wants to make money off the game, and you don’t want to hear your fan base.
I feel like the people who are making decisions, higher-ups are so out of touch and disconnected from their own community. You guys don’t even play the game, so why are you making a decision? It just shows how out of touch and out of date they are with their fan base. Then, today everyone’s super upset because we signed a petition and all[Niantic] is doing is rolling out new updatesfor the game. Like, “hey, this is what’s going to happen. This is the next event.” They’re just not listening to us, and it sucks because like everyone lovesPokemon GO.
It’s really upsetting because I’m the one that’s out there playing the game for you guys. I’m doing this and this. That’s why I decided to start a petition because someone had to do it. I don’t care if it doesn’t gain traction, I don’t care. I just want to know in my heart that I tried.
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Q: Do you have any suggestions for an alternative for how Niantic may be able to “rebalance”?
A:I’m an able person, so I can’t speak on my experience. I can go out there and raid as many times as I want because I have the premium passes, but that’s because I’m an able person. It seems not much of a rebalance, but more punishing those who were able to do remote raids easier.
Q: What kind of cultural impact do you thinkPokemon GOhad and why?
A:Like I said before,Pokemondidn’t release any raids before, so that was like a huge aspect of the game. Before you can go out there, catch and that’s fine. You can do that by yourself, but the one thing that really made an impact during Covid was the release of their remote raids. A lot of people couldn’t go out because they’re immunocompromised, they’re disabled and physically they just can’t, or they suffer from social anxiety. Those things all played a factor in why they didn’t want to go out, so it did change the culture once they released the remote raid. That’s how the game is played now.
They also didn’t consider the fact that people live in rural areas where they don’t have access to gyms or PokeStops. I’m so grateful I live in San Diego where I have PokeStops and gyms around. I read the petition, I read these things like, “I have to drive 15 minutes just to go to get a PokeStop or a gym.” I’m like, “I’m sorry that has to be the case.”
Niantic did release the raid features before the remote raid features, and if you were raiding in person, yeah, you can go to the gym, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll have the right amount of people to even complete the raid. That’s going to be one of the issues. Now people have to kind of pick and choose who they want to raid with. You join a raid and are like, “I don’t know if they can beat this raid. Do I want to risk losing my raid pass?”
I get what the game is trying to do to try and get people out there more active. But times change, and people just don’t want to go out. That’s what really Niantic has to really think about when they make their business decisions. They really created a culture of convenience and doing it from home. That’s the new culture that I see that Niantic created for the game.
Q: Have you or has anyone in your community say, “I’m going to stop playing?” Or thought about that?
A:A majority of my Discord said they’re not putting money into the game anymore. I used to put money into the game, but now I’m strictly just free to play. The reason why is because of how I tell everyone, I wrote this announcement on Monday, I told everyone we’re about three days away before Niantic roll out their major changes that will not only affect our Discord community, but a vast majority of thePokemon GOcommunity. This decision affects our community strongly, mainly because our community was built and grown upon remote raiding. It has become one of the essential reasons why people join in the first place. As a community owner, I don’t agree with this decision and I will stand against it.
I created a petition a few days ago hoping it will make somewhat of a difference. And it has not been because of me, but because we all banded together for a common goal to help save what we all bonded and connected to as a community. I have decided to remain free to play until Niantic decides to revert this decision. I cannot force or tell anyone on the management team how to choose how you spend your money.I want to love this game so muchbecause of the number of people I’ve met along the way and the endless amount of love and support I found within the management team. But I cannot support a company that does not care about the community. I do not want to be a part of the issue. I want to be a part of the solution. So I told people that I will no longer post updates or general information about the game to keep people updated because that will distract and deteriorate people from the real issues.
We need to address the issue first before creating new ones. I still encourage management to post info to help the community stay updated, but I will focus more attention on the petition as well as make sure our message is out there. If I just keep posting new events from Niantic, it’s like let’s brush the issue under the rug. I don’t want to support a company that doesn’t care about the community.
Q: How did people react to what you said?
A:A majority of people said, “Hey, we stand by you.” They don’t want to put money into the game. They’re turning off their locations and services for the game because essentially Niantic is an AR developer company, so they need data. That’s really how they make their money, the data from their game. So that’s what the two things that they’re going to factor out.
This is my decision and whatever you guys decide to do, it’s entirely up to you. But not doing anything, just treating it like nothing has happened, that’s going to contribute to the issue too.
I remember someone mentioned that [the petition] only had 200 supporters and then next thing you know, it hit 20,000. If I feel strongly about this, I’m not the only one. After that, it just gained so much traction.Right now it’s at 78,000 supporters, and it’s still growing.
For me, if I strongly believe in something, I’m going to do whatever it takes because I feel it’s right.
Q: Do you have any idea what the next step might be?
A:My decision is if they’re not saying anything, I think the next step here is just to stop playing the game in general. It’s not the same. If [Niantic] does this now, imagine how they’re going to do decisions later on in the game.
Now that the whole remote raid is gone, people totally forgot about the wholeHoennPokemon GOTour incident. I was one of the people that went there and attended in person and that was kind of brushed under the rug too. That was like my first in-person event. It was hosted in Vegas, and it was expected that 50,000 people would be attending. And it was, and then next thing you know, the first day for two hours, no one could log into the game.
They said that it was an issue because there [was no] anticipation of the 75,000 members that showed up that weren’t supposed to be there. It wasn’t really thought out, like I was getting in and out issues back and forth. It was almost like an eight-hour event and it was unplayable. You had issues connecting in joining. You couldn’t even do raids.
They had like 15-minute timers for each raid, and you couldn’t join. You couldn’t join your friends because everyone was trying to get into the raid, and sometimes you would freeze, or sometimes the game wouldn’t work. By the time you completed a raid, you only had seven, eight balls to catch Pokemon. That’s not even enough. It was such a bad event that on the first day it went onto the local news.
And the reason why I say it was the worst event was that they had seven food truck vendors. They had seven food truck vendors for the whole 50,000 people. It was not worth it for me. The money I took for the hotel and the money I took for the flight all factor into why I didn’t have a great experience. I think for me, it’s like if we continue to play the game or continue to do these things, they’re not going to listen. They’re just going to do these new things that make you kind of forget what’s going on. I didn’t forget about that event. I didn’t forget about it.
Q: Do you have any final message that you want to say to Niantic?
A:I get the business decision that you guys have to make in order – to what they say – preserve the health and condition of the game, but I think before making a decision, you should really listen to your community and listen to the community ambassadors that you put in this position to understand your community to see how it’s going before making this very big decision. Have a survey or ask these questions. You have a platform asPokemon, the one thing that everyone has grown to love.
But do I love this game? No, I don’t love it because of what decisions you’re making for the game. Like, one thing that I do want to point out is that if they want to be a game that’s going to last forever, they should need to take examples fromLeague of Legends.League of Legendshas been around for more than a decade. You know why? Because they listen to their community. They don’t make these balances. They don’t make balances or make these decisions without consent because they’re the ones that are playing the game.
We’re playing every day, so that’s the one thing I will say, take examples fromgames likeLeague of Legendsbecause they really listen to their community. They put forms out, they put people in testing, they ask the community – they really ask the community, they really listen to the feedback. I know that the developers have their own different goals and the players have their own different goals too. But in all retrospect, if everything is like that, this does not rebalance a game at all.
You want to limit raids and increase pricing. How does that rebalance a game? If you really want to rebalance a game, don’t increase the prices. Keep it the same. Make it an incentive to go out, and lower the cost of regular passes that go out. You incentivize them to go out using that and give more out of using a green pass, which you have to go out there in person. Incentivize that, don’t punish them by increasing prices. There are a lot of ways that they can go about this. I feel like whoever’s making the decision does not play the game.
They’re disconnected from their own community to really realize that, and it’s sad. It has saddened me. I almost shed a tear in this interview because it’s something that I spent my three years of Covid doing – building a community. It really hits home for me. It just sucks because people who can’t go out there raid or people who have had kids, people who are immunocompromised, they voice their opinions to me because they feel like they don’t have a voice to say anything. I’m like that last kind of the last resort for them.
Q: What is the name of your Discord server?
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Pokemon GOis available on Android and iOS.
