Trainers,
in our APK Mine of 0.59.1 it was discovered that Niantic is working on an in game system for redeeming passcodes in exchange for “something special”. Today, we found out what is that “something special”!
At this moment, we can confirm several categories of redeemable rewards, but do remember that some may not be active for a while. The redeemable categories that are confirmed at this moment are:
- Items,
- Avatar Swag
- Pokémon Candy
- Stardust
- PokéCoins
Redeemable Passcode Rewards
This info was found in the network messages (protobuf messages) that the Pokémon GO mobile app exchanges with Niantics’ servers. The message is called “RedeemPasscodeReward” and denotes the following possible rewards:
message RedeemPasscodeReward {
repeated .POGOProtos.Data.Redeem.RedeemedItem items = 1;
repeated .POGOProtos.Data.Redeem.RedeemedAvatarItem avatar_items = 2;
repeated .POGOProtos.Data.PokemonData egg_pokemon = 3;
repeated .POGOProtos.Data.PokemonData pokemon = 4;
repeated .POGOProtos.Data.Redeem.PokeCandy poke_candy = 5;
int32 stardust = 6;
int32 pokecoins = 7;
}
Beautifully put together by alucas of AeonLucid/PogoProtos repository.
This falls in line with our expectations, with Niantic reaching out into the well known territory of exclusive rewards for event participation.
This concept is definitely not new in the world of Pokémon games, as it’s hard to find a Pokémon game that had no event exclusive rewards. If you’re curious in what rewards Pokémon events usually offer, check out the Serebii event database.
So, how are these passcodes going to work?
Evidently, players will either receive passcodes through promotions, events or puzzles. Ingress has the same mechanisms which proved successful with the player base. We have on information when or how this feature will be rolled out at this point.
Some potential usages of passcodes range from Region Exclusive Pokémon being obtainable with special codes to selling toy collectibles that form a passcode for a special Shiny Pokémon.
The system can take any shape or form, so it’s hard to predict or speculate. We’ll be taking a deeper look at the APK again later today, so it’s possible we’ll find something new.
