Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: mega raids, Niantic, pokemon, pokemon go, shiny houndoom

Shiny Houndoom Confirmed In Pokémon GO… But Did Niantic Forget?

This has been a rocky week for the Pokémon GO community. Fresh off the controversy surrounding Mega Energy and Mega Raids, Niantic announced that they were pulling back on some of the pandemic bonuses, including Incense effectivity and Egg hatch distance. This led to an uproar on social media that continues in the replies to all of their posts to this day. Shortly after that, Mega Houndoom was introduced in Mega Raids… but something seemed to be missing. Almost a full day after the release, none of the millions of active players had been able to visually confirm the existence of Shiny Houndoom.

Ever since the introduction of Mega Raids, the boss being available as Shiny during the encounter has been a given. Now, sometimes it takes a long stretch of time to report than usual, but due to the size of the player base, someone often confirms Shiny encounters within the first couple of hours of release. Normally, much sooner. The sheer amount of time that elapsed after Mega Houndoom's release had players wondering if Niantic had decided to not off this Pokémon's Shiny variant in raids.

Finally. almost a full day after its release, Shiny Houndoom was confirmed on the Silph Road's subreddit dedicated to Pokémon GO research. After that, multiple encounters (including one in my own raid group, I can add as a personal anecdote) have been confirmed… leaving players wondering if it was truly just a case of bad luck at first, or if Niantic had forgotten to switch Shiny Houndoom on when it was first released in Mega Raids. This has happened in the past, as recently as this summer with Unown at the GO Fest Make-up Event for early time zones, which led to a… this is actually real… GO Fest Make-up Make-up Event for some players.

It's unlikely that there will be any follow-up on what truly happened with Shiny Houndoom in Mega Raids, but Bleeding Cool is happy to report that this shining blue hell-hound is really out there, waiting to be raided and caught. Best of luck, fellow trainers.

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