Pokémon Go players fear Niantic will kill its own game

Pokémon Go players are fed up with Niantic’s monetization and believe the company is intentionally trying to kill the game.

Pokémon Go recently announced its “Road to Sinnoh” event, which will lead into the overall Pokémon Go Tour: Sinnoh event.

Part of this announcement revealed that players will have to pay real money to fully enjoy the event.

This news, along with a series of recent monetization choices, has players thinking that Niantic might be trying to kill the game.

Pokémon Go players are rebelling against Niantic for letting the game die

The conversation began on the Pokémon Go subreddit in a post titled: “How it feels lately.”

The post contained an edited image of the game’s logo, with the word “Spend”added to form “Pokémon Go Spend.”

This is a clear jab at the monetization of the game, and it was largely prompted by the announcement of the event. (A screenshot of the post is shown below):

“Is it because of this ‘Road to Sinnoh’ thing that requires $10 to fully experience the event?” asks one user, before lamenting that the number of things you can buy is increasing while the quality of the game “is not keeping up.”

Other fans took the time to express their frustrations with Niantic, with one user saying: “It almost feels like they want to kill the game and move on to something else that’s entirely AR…”

It’s clear that there’s a lot of anger about how the game has moved toward monetizing some of its biggest events, like Raids.

Another comment says: “This is insane, before it was $0.83 for a raid, now it’s $2.35 for a single raid. There is literally no new content, other than new bugs. I uninstalled it a few months ago.”

Other users point out that it’s just the nature of the game to be mobile, and that if these people have a problem, they should just stop playing.

Regardless of the current state of the game, the Road to Sinnoh event is sure to attract a good number of players returning to Pokémon Go.