Just weeks after sale, Pokémon Go will let you play more from home – but developers say Monopoly Go owner isn’t behind sweeping changes

Pokémon Go is making big changes to let players do more while sitting at home, just weeks after being sold to Monopoly Go owner Scopely as part of a deal worth $3.5bn.

But in an interview with Eurogamer, the game’s development team says these changes – which double the number of Remote Raids possible per day and add remote options to other types of gameplay – were decided upon separately from Niantic’s sale.

Indeed, Pokémon Go senior producer John Funtanilla tells me that this shake-up – the biggest to impact the game in several years – was “100 percent” being made by the game’s own leadership and comes as part of ongoing discussions going back “years”.

Beginning next week, Pokémon Go will permanently increase its daily Remote Raid limit from five to 10, doubling the number of remote activities you can perform from your sofa without going outside.

Remote raids were originally introduced during the era of Covid lockdowns as a way for the game to continue despite the game’s original creator Niantic previously championing outdoors play. The feature – which proved hugely popular with fans and helped Niantic make more money from the game than ever – has since remained, though with limitations added in 2023 to try and incentivise outdoors play once again.

Now, the needle is swinging back the other way.

In other new changes, Pokémon Go will next week allow players to permanently use Remote Raid Passes to access Shadow Raids, as well as Max Battles for Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokémon – which were previously only available via in-person play.

The changes go live globally on 13th May at 7pm UK time (11am Pacific), and come with a couple of other Max Battle tweaks. The feature’s Max Particle (MP) limit will be boosted to 1500 so you can hold more than before, and you’ll get more Premier Balls and XP from battling in-person. Otherwise, pricing and other mechanics remain unchanged (you won’t be able to collect MP from afar).

“It’s entirely the leadership here, internally, and definitely 100 percent our decision.”

“These changes take a long time to get into the game,” Funtanilla says to me as we speak via video call, distancing today’s announcements from the game’s recent sale to Scopely. “These are things we take measured approaches to, and it’s entirely a Pokémon Go decision. These are things we have looked at for years – we’ve looked at the data, we’ve looked at the community feedback. It’s entirely the leadership here, internally, and definitely 100 percent our decision to make these changes.”

It’s easy to imagine Pokémon Go’s community being skeptical of the timing – and indeed, the possibility of Scopely loosening or outright removing the game’s Remote Raid Pass limit was floated by many fans after word that Niantic was selling up became public. But Funtanilla is adamant that such a big decision for the future of Pokémon Go would not have been made in such a short period of time.

“The timing is very interesting for us,” Funtanilla acknowledges, “but these are things we have discussions on for years. I’ve been at Niantic for a good while, I worked on Shadow Raids and it’s something we brought up at the time, we discussed it internally and everything was towards investing in communities and making sure we were expanding that gameplay,” he continues, referencing Niantic’s push to get people back outside in early 2023, as the world recovered from the worst impacts of Covid.

“It’s measured approaches to get to this point,” Funtanilla adds, “there are a lot of micro milestones along the way. It’s not something we can just flip on.” Indeed, these changes follow a test back in January this year where players could use Remote Raid Passes to battle Shadow Ho-Oh, something Funtanilla points to now as part of the team’s test for how remote raiding Shadow Pokémon impacted player behaviour.

“Back in January we did run Shadow Ho-Oh [as a Remote Raid oppurtunity] and we tested that,” Funtanilla says. “We’ve built years and years of features with Shadow Raids, Gigantamax, Dynamax, Party Play – features getting players outside, finding and being part of their communities. It came to a point where we’re like, ‘let’s see how this does. Is it going to impact community play? Is it going to help us expand gameplay and players globally, being able to make connections?’ And it went very well. It’s something where we saw that these kinds of systems can truly coexist.

“The magic of Pokémon Go is still playing in person and meeting up in communities.”

“But it’s not to say… you know, we’ve invested so much through Campfire Community Ambassadors. And in March, we actually had record-breaking Community Ambassador check-ins, with 1m check-ins at the time. So this is definitely not for the lack of community.”

Finding a balance between increasing player engagement – the number of people playing, and paying – and maintaining the value of what people are playing for remains crucial, Funtanilla continues, which is why there are still limits to daily remote raiding – even if they are now higher.

“I remember introducing Shadow Raids and the push to get people outside, including the controversial raise in price for Remote Raid Passes,” Funtanilla says. “Those changes were sweeping. We changed the price, we changed a Trainer’s ability to engage with the content over and over. And I agree with it – there’s definitely unhealthy habits there but also we wanted to make sure that we can can protect the content, to make sure there is a game there for people to play.

“Going from five to 10 [Remote Raid passes per day limit] might seem like a lot, but that is a baseline increase and I’m always pushing to make sure we don’t overreach, otherwise we get in a position where we might have to roll back decisions,” he continues. “The magic of Pokémon Go is still playing in person and meeting up in communities. It’s always going to be the most cost effective way to play – the difficulty will come down and it’s more cost effective to use MP in person without Remote Raid Passes.”

Speaking of costs, the need to effectively spend two currencies – MP and a Remote Raid Pass – to remotely engage with Max Battles does feel particularly punitive. But Funtanilla’s response here is that the value is justified by the option to battle better versions of Pokémon at a player’s convenience.

“We have to make sure we protect the value of that content.”

“I understand folks’ sentiments on pricing there, and to me it comes down to content,” he says. “Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokémon are effectively +1 Pokémon, they can do everything other Pokémon can do but have specific utility in Dynamax and Gigantamax battles. If you station these Pokémon you get candies, and you can station Legendary Pokémon. You get access to this whole ecosystem. We have to make sure we protect the value of that content.

“It does also come down also to convenience, and folks being able to do this on their own time – and that’s something we also want to support. In recent years now we’re moving towards evolving with players, making sure that they can enjoy the game their way.”

So why make these changes now? Funtanilla notes the amount of content in the game – “Dynamax, Gigantamax, there’s a whole new vector of content that can be gotten from that feature, on top of Shadow Raids, Mega Raids” – as a reason to offer more flexibility. And with Max Battles, the team wanted to see their impact and rollout first with in-person play, so communities could reap the rewards of having a reason to meet up again and work together.

“The number one thing was, let’s get the feature out there,” Funtanilla says of the game’s launch of Max Battles in September 2024. “Let’s see how the community interacts with it. These are very difficult end-game battles. And we had [huge] community check-ins, in Taiwan I think we had like 4000 players coming together. It’s revitalised that gameplay. For remotes, it’s something we’ve always tried to explore but those discussions could take years to find the exact [implementation]. And I think at this point it lines up with us expanding gameplay.”