Pokemon Go: Did Remote Raid boycott do any good?

After Niantic’s decision to nerf Remote Raid passes in Pokemon Go, a significant number of players, on April 6, planned to boycott the game. However, the question remains whether this boycott was successful in bringing about the desired change.

For a lot of Pokemon Go enthusiasts, March 30 was the day when their patience with the mobile game finally snapped. Niantic’s announcement of the Remote Raid Passes nerf was the tipping point, the proverbial last straw, that drove them to the edge.

By removing some of the most lauded accessibility features implemented during the pandemic, Niantic had already been chipping away at players’ goodwill over the past year. However, the nerf to Remote Raid Passes was the final straw for many trainers, and it prompted a significant outcry similar to the backlash the company faced in 2021. As a result, players rallied together once again and started a strike on April 6, the day the Remote Raid Pass nerf went into effect.

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It’s not hard to see why players would feel compelled to boycott once again. The success of the 2021 boycott in convincing Niantic to revert changes made to player distances only reinforces the idea that a louder, more sustained protest could have a similar impact.

Pokemon Go player count not affected by boycott

Undoubtedly, the Pokemon Go boycott made its voice heard loud and clear. With the hashtag #HearUsNiantic trending for several consecutive days, prominent content creators in the community producing impassioned videos, and a petition to reverse the Remote Raid modifications garnering over 100,000 signatures, there was no shortage of fervent protest. However, the crucial question remains: did all this translate into measurable in-game statistics?

Despite the widespread uproar and efforts to boycott Pokemon Go, the impact on the game’s player count appears to have been negligible, as indicated by data from ActivePlayer.io. In fact, April 2023 saw one of the highest average monthly player counts since May of 2022. When compared to the previous month, the player count only experienced a 0.50% drop, which is considered insignificant in the context of Pokemon Go’s fluctuations in player base.

However, it should be noted that there are certain figures that suggest a decline in Pokemon Go’s popularity. For instance, in February 2023, the game witnessed a significant decrease of almost 50% in its maximum daily players, plummeting from 9.1 million to 5.2 million. Since then, this figure has only marginally increased by 100k or less. Additionally, throughout 2022, there were four months during which the number of players dropped more significantly than during the supposed boycott period.

Pokemon Go raid stat show something else

While there’s no definitive metric to quantify whether the Remote Raid nerf impacted raid participation since April 6, anecdotal evidence from players suggests a different perspective.

On various online platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, players have shared their experiences about the difficulty or impossibility of raiding without Remote Raiders. Many of them have expressed that the nerf to Remote Raid passes has had a detrimental effect on their local Pokemon Go communities, with some even claiming that it caused them to collapse entirely.

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