Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Heracross, Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go

Here Is Where The Pokémon GO Boycott & #HearUsNiantic Fails

Pokémon GO is currently being boycotted by a vocal group of players who believe that Niantic Labs, the developer behind the games, has done wrong by the players. This boycott and the trending hashtag #HearUsNiantic come as a result of Niantic removing the pandemic bonuses from the game. Mostly, people are angry that Niantic has removed the increased PokéStop range, which is something that has helped people play both in quarantine as well as disabled players who were previously unable to reach stops at the original distance. The boycott alleges that Niantic has failed in communication with the player baser, which is something that I have personally reported on for Bleeding Cool in the past. Niantic routinely announces vital information in the strangest of ways, utilizing different Twitter accounts (sometimes @PokemonGOApp, sometimes @NinaticHelp) and even their employees' Reddit accounts. #HearUsNiantic is right in that allegation. However, there is nuance to Niantic's role in Pokémon GO that the influencers who are pushing this boycott, many of them who have worked directly with Niantic in the past, have failed to communicate to the players who might not understand this full situation. This is where this boycott fails, ironically: disingenuous and fractured communication from within, which paints Nianic as a villain when there's more to the story.

The information being left out of this boycott is very simple. Influencers who know this have, at every turn, failed to communicate this. Some of them even have said they don't understand why Niantic doesn't "just" revert the distance, even after Niantic laid out a schedule for their final decision. Here is what is not being communicated.

Niantic doesn't own Pokémon GO. Their decisions, small and large, are part of a complex contract between Niantic Labs, the Pokémon Company International, and Nintendo.

Niantic can't just do anything. Everything, from the smallest release to the major changes, has to pass through corporations that are even larger than Niantic. We cannot know the full details of this agreement, but clearly, to anyone who understands this business relationship, there's more going on here. Could Nintendo possibly not want Pokémon GO to become a permanently play-at-home game, because then what will the main series games become? Sure. Could there be hundreds of reasons for Niantic being unable to "just" answer a fanbase demanded immediate, decisive action? Absolutely.

The influencers who haven't communicated this have poisoned the waters of this boycott, leading to their supporters bullying players as well as other influencers who have continued playing the game.

Pokémon GO content creator and influencer Poke AK took to Twitter to address some of this. He wrote:

Have fun if you want! Don't let people bully you into feeling guilty for spending money on #PokemonGO

His tweet included a video, in which he said:

Keep playing the game if you want to play. Simple as that. This has become a bully tactic now. I just wantted to give you guys that quick message because this is complete nonsense. […] No matter how you twist it, you can't win with these people. If you say 'yes' if they want you to say 'yes,' you're wrong. If you say 'no' if they want you to say 'no,' you're wrong. You're always in the wrong. […] Don't let people bully you because you're playing or raiding.

Then, Mystic7, a content creator who was harassed online for not agreeing to fully boycott, was one of the few who spoke on Twitter about the nuance of Niantic's situation, writing:

Also a fun little thought experiment: If Niantic/TPC/Nintendo cave to community demands, they will have a LOT less power in regards to their future updates and game direction. If Niantic ignores, they backhand their community and might kill the game. Talk about decisions ay?

He was immediately proven correct, as well, when Niantic responded to the boycott to only then be hit with more demands to make the currently raid-exclusive Heracross spawn in the wild in Pokémon GO. Keeping event Pokémon with extremely boosted Shiny rates exclusive to raids or PVP encounters rather than including them in the wild is the most common of happenings in Pokémon GO, but now… outrage ensues.

This, funny enough, included Mystic7 himself. He wrote:

Niantic released shiny Heracross in raids for this event and REMOVED IT from the wild in regions it naturally spawns… wtf are we doing rn

What are we doing right now indeed?

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