Pokémon Go the Niantic developers recently decided to call back the social distancing requirements of the game for US and New Zealand players, and he did no go down well with the fans.
While Niantic’s reasoning was that “hey in these two countries the pandemic is mostly over, right?”, Fans were very right in pointing out that the pandemic is certainly over. no and this forcing players to congregate more very close to Gyms and Pokéstops was a reckless and reckless thing. He Tag #BoycottNiantic was created for users to express their displeasure.
Tthe volume of the threats encouraged developers to take action and jon answer, earlier this month, Niantic moved to set up a “working group”:
…we have listened to your input clearly and, therefore, to address the concerns you have raised, we take the following actions: We bring together an in-house multifunctional team to develop proposals designed to preserve our mission of inspiring people to explore the world together, although it also addresses specific concerns that have been raised about the distance of interaction. We will share the findings of this working group on the upcoming game season change (September 1). As part of this process, we will also be contacting community leaders in the coming days to accompany us in this dialogue.
While this “working group” continues to share its “complete findings,” they have already made a change, advertiser on Twitter today before uploading the file Pokéstop and Gym range from 80m to 40m, now back to 80m for everyone:
Trainers: We look forward to sharing our plans as a result of the Sept. 1 working group, but no need to wait. From now on, the 80 meters will be the base interaction radius of PokéStops and gyms worldwide.
Thank you to everyone who made your voice heard. We’ve listened to you and we understand that this has been a benefit for many players. We will share more next week.
G / O Media may receive a commission
This is good news, especially considering the context of what has happened over the weeks since the distance was originally changed. Take New Zealand, for example: chosen as one of only two countries to see changes in distance, given the country’s excellent Covid song history, the last week has seen its biggest outbreak since the pandemic began, causing blockades across the country and doing cap play hard, let alone meetings at 40m.