Two Free Raid Passes Per Day Are Available On September 7 and 8

Due to previous issues impacting Trainers encountering certain Pokémon during Raids, from 9/7 1 pm PDT to 9/8 1 pm PDT, you can receive up to 2 free Raid passes per day.

Niantic Support has announced that two free raid passes will be available on September 7 and September 8, following a serious issue with Entei and Suicune not being shiny eligible from raid encounters. The official tweet confirmed that free raid passes are being handed out as compensation for “issues encountering certain Pokémon”.

As it turns out, the issues mentioned in the tweet were quite severe, as shiny Raikou was the only shiny Johto beast available on September 2nd, when the first week of Ultra Bonus rewards has started. Reddit players were quick to spot and report the issue and Vicksin outlined the whole ordeal in a lengthy post on The Silph Road subreddit.

Suicune Entei Raikou
Suicune Counters Entei Counters Raikou Counters

The post outlined the real underlying problem with the shiny Johto trio:

  • Announcements leading to the event stated that all three shinies (Suicune, Raikou, Entei) will be available from raids
  • This lead to players spending money on raid passes and shiny hunting Entei, Raikou and Suicune, but only Raikou was available
  • As a result, players were quite angry with the situation. According to one source from our Discord server, there was a group of players who only wanted shiny Suicune, but it was nowhere to be found

Luckily, the situation is now resolved, as both shiny Suicune and shiny Entei are now available. On top of that, Niantic has doubled the amount of free raid passes throughout this weekend – a welcome move with great timing in our opinion.