As observed yesterday, the Pokémon GO Anniversary event has brought a lot of discontent to the Pokémon GO player base, resulting in a lot of players almost instantly loosing interest in the event overall.
The discontent stems mostly from two issues players have with the event:
- Lack of meaningful rewards
- Steep pricing of the Anniversary Box
It’s hard to argue for Niantic in this instance, as a the event rewards include yet another Pikachu with a hat and the Anniversary Box is priced at 1200 PokéCoins, making it cost almost as much as the individual items inside.
Players have expressed their discontent on almost every media outlet: “salty” Tweets, Youtube comments and Facebook discussions are a plenty. This tweet by Alex Illest is the top voted reply to Pokémon GO’s official tweet about the event technical difficulties:
https://twitter.com/alexillest/status/883070320277680131
Even the Silph Road subreddit, traditionally known as a place of good and constructive discourse, has fallen under the influence of angry masses. The escalation was so quick that Dronpes, one of the Silph Road moderators, had to intervene in order to curb the number of rage comments.
The main Pokémon GO reddit community was closed for the better portion of the last evening, as a staggering number of salty, offensive and raging commentators flocked to express their discontent.
Where do we stand on the issue?
It’s not a custom for us to comment on Niantic’s pricing and sales, but we have to agree with the common sentiment: we won’t be buying the Anniversary Box.
The Anniversary Box is simply not a good deal:
- For 1100 Coins you can get all of the Items inside
- You end up paying 100 Coins for some Ultra Balls / Max Revives
- You can get Ultra Balls and Max Revives for free
It’s rather obvious that this event is not really great, but the question that we’re most interested in is this: how did we get here?
After the spectacular release of Raids and after participating in dozens of events throughout the past 12 months, it’s hard to believe that Niantic wasn’t aware of players’ expectations for the Anniversary Event.
Given the wording of the official announcement, we believe that they’re preparing something big (and worldwide) for the GO Fest on July 22. If that’s the case, it’s easy to understand why the Anniversary event feels underdeveloped and underwhelming – they are focused elsewhere.
If that’s not the case, can we have Weekend Bloom again, please?
A parting meme is in order:
