Pokémon: No Way HOME

Plus, Niantic won't GO back on remote raid decision

Welcome back to another week of news here at The Victory Road. It’s your best Pika Pal, Cooltrainer Ace. I’m the polar opposite of that girl in Gen 4 who wants to trade you a Haunter holding an Everstone: here to give you more awesome than bargained for.

Here’s this week’s rundown:

  • Pokémon pulls the rug on a HOME update release

  • … and cancels a weekend of Scarlet/Violet Raids

  • Niantic’s response to remote raid changes

Pokémon HOME(less)

Ah, May 18th. It seems like so long ago. The sky was shining, the Pidgeys were chirping, and Pokémon HOME had just been announced to update for Scarlet & Violet compatibility, arriving on May 24.

And then it all went to hell on a Houndoom one day later.

At this point, there is still no definitive release date for Pokémon HOME update 3.0.0. The announcement left many fans wondering if the date was indeed an error or if a last-minute bug had been discovered, prompting a total stop while they fixed the issue

Some suggested the tweet was incorrect, however, the date also appeared on the pokemon.com announcement as well. Either way, trainers weren’t happy, to say the least.

We’ll likely never know the cause but you’ve gotta wonder if Team Rocket is running things at TPIC lately, especially when you consider what else happened on the same day last week:

Tera Raids suspended due to bugs

Unfortunately, Pokémon HOME wasn’t the only casualty announced on May 18. In a day that will go down in PokéInfamy forever (more on that later), Tera Raids for both Iron Treads/Great Tusk and Chesnaught were suspended and rescheduled (date TBD).

As many players experienced and Serebii.net reported, this was due to an error in the raids that caused Great Tusk/Iron Treads to “call a Material item for those Pokémon which doesn't exist causing the game to lock online.” You can see it in the above pic listed as None x2.

No word on when these raids will return yet, but we’ve been promised players will have another crack at Great Tusk/Iron Treads and Chesnaught, if they missed out before the suspension.

Niantic sticking to their plans on remote raids

In an interview published by Dot Esports on -you guessed it- May 18th, Michael Steranka, Pokémon GO Director and John Funtanilla, Pokémon GO Senior Producer confirmed that Niantic will not be removing the cap on remote raid passes or reversing any changes that replaced ease of access features introduced during the pandemic.

Earlier in the year, many players boycotted the game and/or buying items in-game as part of the #HearUsNiantic strike. Numerous sites reported that Pokémon GO’s revenue dipped to a 5-year-low in April 2023 and that player count is decreasing as well. Coincidence? Trend? Time will tell.

“Yeah, we’ve definitely taken note. It’s hard to ignore, right? I’m personally being tagged a lot in a lot of these tweets. So we read everything, and we see everything. It’s one of those things where we never want to go out and respond to two calls like that, unless we have something to actually show for it. And for us, for the rest of this year, we really feel like actions will speak louder than words.

And we’ve been working really hard as a development team to put together a huge slate of new features that players we hope will enjoy over the course of this year. So, personally speaking, I’m pretty sure I used to do more remote raids than 99 percent of your readers.

That was a very, very painful decision to make even for me. But when we look at sort of the overall health of the game, and the type of behaviors that remote raid passes were introducing, it just really didn’t align with the kind of experience we were trying to create. And I can honestly say even for me personally, it became sort of an unhealthy way to engage with the game. I would just sort of throw money at Poké Coins so that I can spam legendary raids as much as possible.

And we’re talking about legendary Pokémon; they’re supposed to be the epic epitome of all Pokémon content. And this is something that players including myself are doing over a dozen times a day, for some people over 100 times a day. And so that’s something that we really honestly let go on a little bit too long and ultimately needed to course correct.

So again, super, super painful decision that is not something we took lightly. But it’s something that we felt is necessary for the longevity of the game and to also ensure that we’re not really compromising on our mission.

And so yeah, we have no plans to directly address any of the HearUsNiantic things recently, because we’ll be sticking with the decision that was made. But instead, we’re hopeful that players will see a lot of the hard work that the team has been putting into this game for the past year because I think what we have coming out in 2023 is gonna really blow people away.”

Michael Steranka (Pokémon GO Director)

It remains to be seen what the player base thinks of the Masterball or recently introduced Shadow Raids and Rising Shadows event.

Random encounters around the internet

And now, for an injection of positivity into this email. Here’s some good news:

Obscure Pokémon Fact of the Day (from u/Mx_Toniy_4869)

Until next time,
Cooltrainer “I don’t make the news, I just report it” Ace