Good news Pokémon GO trainers! It looks like the noise from the community had the intended effect. The developer has confirmed that the base interaction radius for both PokéStops and Gyms will be 80 meters. This applies to all regions.
It was back in June when Niantic announced that they would revert some of the changes made due to the pandemic. This was to encourage trainers to get out of their houses. At that time, it was not a surprise considering that the US has eased restrictions.
By August, however, the world faced the threat of the delta variant, which meant that going out was not an option. With the exploration bonuses already expired, it was reported that a lot of players were planning to quit the game.
This resulted in Niantic re-implementing the pandemic changes. In particular, one of those was the interaction radius, which was changed back to 80 meters.
In a post, Executive Producer Steve Wang revealed that the final decision to set that interaction distance at 80 meters was due to conversations with various community leaders. It was found out that the radius had a positive quality of life improvement since it was implemented.
Wang went on to say that they still continue to believe that it is important to discover new things and interesting places in the real world. To that end, he added that they are trying to come up with the news to not only motivate but also reward trainers who explore and exercise in the real world.
Communication Issues
Wang also shared that during the various discussions conducted, they learned that there’s still a lot of room to grow communication-wise. Moving forward, Niantic has offered these commitments to all trainers:
- Beginning October, a developer diary is going to be published every other month. It will share the latest priorities, features, and events for the game.
- Set up regular conversations with community leaders to continue the dialogue that’s been started.
- Continue to work on updating the Known Issues page. Niantic is putting a high priority on bringing greater visibility into the status of existing bugs.
What do you think? Is Niantic moving in the right way?
Pokémon GO was released in 2016 on Android and iOS.
