Opinion: It’s Time for Niantic to Allow Remote Trading in Pokemon GO

At the time this article is being written, non-essential businesses have been closed in my state (New Hampshire) for five weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many, including the university where I work, have been closed even longer. 

Also at the time this article is being written, I have fifty-three lucky friends in Pokemon GO. Obviously I’ve put quite a bit of effort into building and maintaining these friendships; for me, the opportunity for guaranteed lucky trades is the biggest draw to the friendship system anyway. A few of these I’ve had for months--they’re people I used to see quite often but have moved across the country, or are people I met at Pokemon GO-related events, but many are more recent, and it’s just not possible to clear this backlog of lucky trades given the current global health situation.

Like most people, Pokemon GO has not been my top priority for the past several weeks. I have limited my play to areas where I am unlikely to encounter another human, and am sure to keep my distance in the rare occasions when it happens. Niantic has taken steps to ensure its player base doesn’t lose interest in their game during these times in which people around the world have been asked by their local governments not to congregate with others outside of their household. I certainly applaud their decision to roll out remote raiding, allowing us to continue using what has been one of the core features of the game for the past three years, though in a limited capacity (the fact that we are unable to use daily free raid passes to do this fills me with rage, but that’s better left for another article). 

I also applaud Niantic’s decision to reduce the requirement for remote battles from Ultra Friends to Good Friends, making it less tempting to meet up with others for daily interactions or go out and spin stops so we can send gifts. Increased incense spawns, new daily field research that can be completed from home, lifted requirements for Go Battle League matches, and even play-at-home events have all been welcome additions to the game. But to this day, Niantic has not changed the 100 meter trade radius, and that’s a problem.

There are plenty of reasons why this is the perfect time to finally launch this mechanic. To name a few:

• It’s obviously a bad time for players to meet up for trades. Our Pokemon storage is filling up with things we’d like to trade, but can’t.
• Niantic is continuing to make changes to PvP that make players want to invest more stardust in Pokemon they may or may not have. Aqua Tail Palkia and Fire Punch Groudon will soon be staples in the Master League meta, but at the same time, trainers are less active and not gaining as much stardust as usual. Remote lucky trades will allow more players to invest in strong Pokemon and should serve to increase interest in the Go Battle League.
• At the very least, it gives us a reason to check in and communicate with other players during isolation. Even if it’s just to arrange a trade, it’s nice to stay connected at a time when many of us aren’t doing a lot of socializing.
• The inability to make trades affects the majority of players, but does not matter to people who spoof or engage in multi-accounting or account-sharing, all of which are against the Terms of Service. It’s not my intention to make any kind of moral judgment about such players, but I think it’s in Niantic’s interest to make decisions that don’t disproportionately hurt those who abide by their policies.

Even before the pandemic, though, remote trading was overdue. Plenty of my lucky friends are former colleagues who no longer live in my area. Others still are other GamePress writers or people I’ve met at Go Fests, Safari Zones, and regional meetups of the PoGoRaids community. I don’t know when I’ll be able to see these people again, and I don’t see any principled reason why we should have to wait indefinitely to make a trade.

So here’s my suggestion to Niantic: at the very least, allow remote lucky trades for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, even in some limited capacity; and seriously consider making this a permanent change in Pokemon GO. Preferably, extend this to all Best Friends or even Ultra Friends without restriction. All other core mechanics in the game have been preserved to some extent, and this simple change would be a great step towards preserving this one. I also suspect it wouldn’t be hard to implement, since trades are really done remotely already, rather than using Bluetooth or other methods of ensuring close proximity--it would just be a matter of increasing the trade radius.

From Niantic’s perspective, there are several possible problems; here are some that come to mind, as well as some simple solutions Niantic could implement if they felt the need:

Problem:  This makes regional exclusives too easy to obtain, which is against the spirit of the mechanic.

Solution: Perhaps simply disallow new Pokedex entries in remote trades. It would be great to be able to do legendary and shiny trades, at least, but hell, even restricting to non-special trades would be an improvement.

Problem:  This will dissuade players from trading in person when the pandemic is over.

Solution: Is this really a problem? If so, just limit it to a certain number of trades per day, so that we’ll continue to have to meet up with people to do all the trades we want. It would be great not to have such a restriction while so many people are in quarantine, though...

Problem:  What if trainers aren’t in touch outside of the game, and can’t arrange a time to trade?

Solution: The reality is that lots of trainers are connected via Discord, Facebook, etc., and can easily coordinate trades as we already do for battles. We also know from Trainer Battles that Niantic is capable of creating pop-up notifications when an action is taken by another player; why not do the same for trades?  

It’s important to give Niantic credit for the changes they’ve made that help players continue to enjoy the game while other things in their lives are uncertain. But perhaps as much as anything they’ve done over the past few weeks, this change is badly needed.