Pokémon GO announced recently that it will permanently keep an in-game feature that made the game easier to play while social distancing.
Introduced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the feature doubled the interaction radius around key augmented reality landmarks that are essential to gameplay. Though Niantic -- parent company to Pokémon GO -- removed the feature earlier this month, it chose to permanently reinstate it after weeks of community- and creator-led backlash.
Pre-pandemic, Pokémon GO players needed to be within 40 meters of a PokéStop or Gym to interact with it, but with the now-permanent change, the radius is expanded to 80 meters. Incidentally, players with disabilities found that this feature made the game more accessible to people with limited mobility.
As one of the first mainstream AR mobile games, Pokémon GO is virtually unplayable if you're unable to travel to real-world landmarks like PokéStops and Gyms -- so allowing users to interact with these landmarks from farther away (for example, if a wheelchair-user can't journey off of a paved sidewalk) opened the game up to new players.
Because Pokémon GO has long positioned itself as a game that encourages real-world exploration, worldwide lockdowns posed a unique challenge for Niantic. But by making some small changes -- like expanding the interaction radius by just 40 meters, increasing Pokémon spawns and making it easier to obtain more PokéBalls -- the game became easier to play from home.
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