Pokemon Go Fans Think It’s Being Reviewed By Bots After Remote Raid Pass Fiasco

The Pokemon Go community has been at odds with Niantic for the last few days. The reason behind this was the developer’s decision to limit how many Remote Raids a player can take part in per day. To add to that, the price of Remote Raid Passes has also increased when bought in smaller quantities.

Considering that this is one of the biggest draws of the game, players would have started changing their reviews on the Play Store and App Store – however, they also noticed a whole lot of five-star reviews in the past few days, which look quite like bots (thanks, Dexerto). This has led many to speculate that the game is being review-botted to keep its rating up.

RELATED: I Don’t See How Pokemon Go Recovers From This Remote Raid Pass Fiasco

A post made two days ago on the Pokemon Go Subreddit by xologist2 claims that a lot of the ratings for the app have suddenly disappeared. They posted two images of the Pokemon Go app page, with the older one showing 472,666 ratings, while the more recent one shows 472,594. This drop in the number ratings could be indicative of the App Store removing those which it deemed to be made by bots.

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Another post, this time by flyingswordfish, has posted 46 screenshots of five-star reviews in the past few days. This is pretty odd, since the community has been vocally against Niantic’s recent decisions. The wording of the ratings also seem to be very generic, merely saying things like “good game”. The timing of the bots is also a bit suspicious, given how fans would have been currently giving Pokemon Go a low rating.

As of April 6, Niantic changed the cost of single Remote Raid Passes to 195 PokeCoins each – almost double of the earlier price – and a pack of three went from 525 to 300 PokeCoins. This is added to the fact that players will be limited to taking part in only five Remote Raids per day. Remote Raids were introduced in 2020 as a precaution for the Covid-19 pandemic. However, Niantic feels that nobody is at risk anymore, and has severely limited the feature.

window.arrayOfEmbeds[“some_fake_5_reviews_from_the_last_few_days”] = {‘reddit’ : ‘"n<blockquote class="reddit-embed-bq" style="height:240px"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/12ez2qe/some_fake_5_reviews_from_the_last_few_days/">Some fake 5* reviews from the last few days</a>nby <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/flyingswordfish">u/flyingswordfish</a> in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/">pokemongo</a></blockquote>nn"’}; window.arrayOfEmbedScripts[“reddit”] = “"<script async src="https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js" charset="UTF-8"></script>"”;

“Remote Raid Passes have come to dominate the experience of playing Pokemon Go in a way we never intended,” said a blog post by Niantic. “We believe this change is necessary for the long-term health of the game, and we do not make it lightly.”

This decision has not gone down well with the community, resulting in a number of posts on the game’s forums calling for a strike. The strike asked players not to attend in-person Raids, or purchase Remote Raid Passes or boxes for a week. However, some idiots took things too far and sent death threats to community manager, Tyler.

NEXT: I Don’t Think We’re Going To Bully Season Passes Out Of Existence