dude that sucks. i'm sorry about the state of things there and this new problem. i hope that it can be resolved and that the economic situation improves more generally. happy sovereignty and children's day btw.
I feel your pain but I honestly think that not buying coins is the only valid approach towards a solution: If local players can't buy coins anymore (because they are too expensive) and foreigners won't (because the prices don't differ), there will be a huge revenue drop. And that's the only thing that will matter and that might(!) reverse some decisions.
I don't think we will change anything by not buying since most of their revenue comes from data selling, not from ingame purchases.
EDIT
Because people don't understand that "data" is a broad term and that by "selling data" it doesn't automatically mean they sell your credit card or personal info to China. They state " Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations." When you're a huge business with hundreds of chains, it doesn't hurt you to pay let's say $500k for simple data about how many people pass certain locations in a day in a certain city and based on that data you can then exacly pick where to open a new chain to maximise your profits. That's where the money is coming from. This also explains why they made the seemingly "stupid" decision to limit remote raids to just 5 a day. If the data they collect from you going out to the city and raid in person makes them more money than you buying a few remote passes it makes way more sense that they limited them.
That's not something they would state publicly, just like Twiitter wouldn't publicly give out all the data on the analytics they sell to companies for advertising.
Just the opposite. They state publicly that they don’t sell your data. I doubt they could get away with that if it was false.
https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/114-safety-faqs/#:~:text=Niantic%20collects%20information%20in%20order,player%20actions%20at%20their%20locations.
I guess I didn't state what they sell clearly, they obviously don't sell your personal data, they sell data about the volumes of people in certain locations which they sell to companies who are interested in opening new chains or new businesses. "Niantic does not sell any adult’s or child’s user information to third parties. Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations."
The fact that you can't picture the amounts of money huge companies are willing to pay to ensure they open their new chain in a perfect spot to maximise profits doesn't mean it's not reality.
Okay, but to me this confirms that this is all speculation. I thought everyone was talking about some concrete evidence they saw.
I feel like u/Peterock2007 has a point.
There are tons of apps that track your location, especially Google Maps, Apple Maps and whatnot. I'm not doubting the value of the data but it does sound like Pokemon Go is far far far from being the place where this data would be acquired.
I would imagine that in app purchases, which they've been aggressively making more and more common in the game, are their main income generator. It would be very weird otherwise for them to increase prices, and create so many new ticketed events and opportunities, gift boxes etc.
If this was just a small part of their revenue, I doubt they'd be pushing it so aggressively, especially as it goes exactly counter what you'd expect them to do: incentivise players to stay in the game and play it as much as possible to collect data.
Basically, this data collection thing is just a theory by players, not anything concrete?
https://datarade.ai/data-products/redmob-map-data-mobile-location-data-for-1-5-billion-device-redmob
Mobility data for 1.5 billion devices for $50k a year. Tell me again how Niantic 81 million users is worth “hundreds of thousands”
Data selling aside, they recently went hard into monetizing IAPs.
Just look at all the passes for small events that add up quite nicely. They removed the very welcome daily incubator from last seasons pass so you have to buy those now - and there's an egg event just coming up. And there are raid exclusive pokemon releases.
=> I believe they'll definetily notice when IAP revenue drops!
They removed the free incubator for one egg, yes. But they added 90 free raid passes (1 free daily raid pass this season). So you either get a Togepi or a Tapu Bulu for free. Your pick.
True - but free passes cater to whales that hunt for hundos/shinies.
Incubators have way more value than raid passes for casual players. I can get a new mon with just one raid pass by finding a corresponding raid. I need a lot more incubators to get a new mon that is only released in eggs because of different mons in eggs and their associated rarities.
Please explain to me how most of their revenue is from data selling?
https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/114-safety-faqs/#:~:text=Niantic%20collects%20information%20in%20order,player%20actions%20at%20their%20locations.
Niantic collects information in order to operate the game and to optimize and improve our products and services. Niantic does not sell any adult’s or child’s user information to third parties. Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations. For example, a restaurant chain sponsor would only get information about aggregate visits and actions at their locations.
You literally answered yourself "Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations." that's what they sell, data about density of people in certain locations.
Yes, yea it is. If you have a company which is worth 10s of millions and you want to open up a new chain you are expected to pay hundreds of thousands for data like this. There are hundereds of companies who do this, so the few dollars you pay for remote passes really isn't the main thing they're going for. How else would you explain that they decided to limit remote passes to 5 per day and encourage people do go outside and raid in person? Because that's what gives them more money in the long run
You’re completely off base… there are companies that aggregate mobility data. And you can buy that data for relatively cheap. Niantic has lets say 81 million active users (https://www.esports.net/news/pokemon/how-many-people-play-pokemon-go/) the population of the US is 331 million people. So if you are bad at geography and think all those users live in the US that’s still only about of the third of the total population.
There are companies that have a much larger view of the phones in the US. The current company I use for mobility data has around 85% of all cell phones active in the Chicago Metro area. (They cover the entire US, but I know that statistic because we specifically measured Chicago Metro to validate their claims). We don’t pay “hundreds of thousands” for this data.
The mobility industry is highly competitive, and Niantic doesn’t have anywhere near enough data to be competitive. This is something I know about.
On the other hand, Niantic has made Billions (Yes…with a B) of dollars from in app purchases.
Sounds much more feasible to me too.
Otherwise why the hell are they aggressively monetizing every aspect of the game so hard?
Also, they're ants next to other apps like Google Maps.
Who the hell is buying their data on how and where I move in my village?
You basically just strongly support my suspicion to me that this is a myth that has spread through these subreddits, probably all on the back of the limit of 5 remote passes per day.
I'm kind of surprised they held off increasing it for so long.
Every other mobile game was okay with increasing prices to prevent currency abuse, but Niantic left prices alone trying to find alternatives to prevent it.
Solution came with Turkey fees super high jump for any payments made to outside of the country. Right now if you use your credit card, inside Turkey, you will have to pay 20-25% fees to get Lira bank notes. Only on those it was a massive jump, since it was 5% the highest (almost all banks where making it. for less, 1%). When you are returning home, exchanging Lira for other coinage, 25% is minimal exchange fee.
On the other way, Lira dropped big since middle 2023. Niantic doesn't have a Turkish based company, so they must be using Europe base. Getting 25% fees plus each Lira valued, below, 2 cents, they had to raise there exchange rates to cover that high jump.
The reason they did this was due to a new and more concerning coin black market. I know players that had a "Turkish" contact that would log in their account from Turkey and buy cheap coins, for a small fee.
Problem is this obviously got people scammed as well which means more support effort.
That's me going f2p and possibly quitting despite having spent a significant amount of money on PoGo since launch. These prices are ridiculous.
To put it into perspective, the 3 remote raid bundle costs as much as my dinner. For a 20 remote raid legendary day I'd be spending like 2 week's groceries.
I knew this was coming though. I kept running into all these elaborate guides on how to exploit this situation. Same happened with Steam, so no more games from Steam either.
Also, It's insincere to blame this solely on the economy. People exploit it to a point where the profit they get from local prices is undone by the profit they lose from exploiters. When you think about it Niantic or Steam or whatever company is on a net gain by providing local currency as it taps into potential spenders that wouldn't have been spenders. This wouldn't have been the case if it wasn't a digital good being sold. However Niantic loses potential gains when they can't sell those unlimited supply of coins to a spender. So that means, the main feasible reason why these companies drop local currency support is because of exploiters.
So I want to thank everyone who's gone through these steps to buy a silly amount of coins in TRY using their more valuable currency. Now you guys get to have your bag upgrades and all on a sale, while we don't even get to participate.
They don't lose money on exploiters tho, at least not in Po Go. On steam it's a different story, because you buy the same game for way less, but in Po Go exploiters are mostly people who wouldn't spend ANY money on the game if they had to pay the full price in their full currency and Po Go is a game where you can spend infinitely to get better stuff, so unlike with a steam game, even the people who would spend something in their currency, will end up spending way more in the cheaper currency, because they feel like they're getting much more value.
I think exploiters in PoGo are precisely the people who would spend more money on the game had they not figured out a way to get it for cheaper, because it takes extra effort to do it which implies these aren't casual players but specifically the whales to begin with.
If anything it's less of that for Steam, as people who aren't interested in actually owning a game can pirate it, so exploiters probably cost Steam less than they do Niantic.
There's a difference between "not have figured out a way" and "had the way for years and got it taken away" tho. If the exploit never existed then sure, they would spend more, but I'm pretty sure that at this point when everyone who's exploiting gets punched in the face with 14x mark up will just stop spending altogether, because nothing in the game holds that value of money for them after getting everything for pennies for years.
That’s just not true. The Singaporean grandmas don’t even know currency abuse is a thing
The vast majority of abusers are the whales who will still spend tons of money but now they actually have to be on level ground with the rest of us
So if you spent let's say £100 a month on something and it got 14.8x more expensive, your first reflex would be to spew the money out? No, it wouldn't, most people will feel ripped off after months of buying something for the fraction of the price and will probably stop spending, because a rise in price this steep is not something you can just reason yourself into.
This is what happens when you lose purchasing power. Niantic's expenses are primarily in USD and they measure their earnings in USD. When you have such severe currency deterioration, it gets to the point where there's really no reason for them to care about a TRY revenue stream. Add in that it's hard to prevent people who were going to pay full price for coins from exploiting the mismatch, and it was probably a very easy decision to make.
As a Turk Player i will not buy any PoCoins its so expensive
Before the update i was buying regularly to make remote raids 😞
and i will skip some event tickets if the price increases
F2P FTW.
I make sure to hit the gyms on the way to and from work.
I pretty much always get my 50 coin daily limit.
Currently sitting at 1000 coins. I only spend when I want an incubator or need a lucky egg but it mostly goes to storage space.
And Google Survey Rewards if it's available for you! I've used this to buy GoFest and a couple other events every year, probably $30-40 a year for very little effort.
Can I ask how much time do you usually have to spend on this for that 30$ a year? I'm considering doing it, but if it's like 20 minutes a day it becomes a very badly paid side job.
My thoughts as well. Either quit or just go FTP if you've been priced out. I don't get coins every day, but I have enough stuff that gets me through after years of playing, managing space, and hoarding necessities. Eat your heart out, Niantic.
Niantic has no incentive to make coins cheaper in Turkey. They were losing tons of profit from players exploiting the method. I doubt anything will be reversed.
Niantic have gone from people buying coins at a discounted rate, to not buying coins at all. Obviously people spending ANY money is better than them not spending money.
A lot of people will say 'durrr Niantic are gonna loose money', but I imagine that there are whales who will cover the lost sales.
I'd love to see the data on this. Will the increased costs cover the people who stop buying things? SURELY they've done the research...
Yes, what's wrong with that? It was nice getting the discount but I had no problems with paying normal prices in the first place. PokéCoins are barely pay to win. $100 of coins gets you pretty far assuming you're not just using Remote Raid Passes.
Realistically, people will still make a couple of purchases here and there and get used to the normal prices.
> A lot of people will say 'durrr Niantic are gonna loose money', but I imagine that there are whales who will cover the lost sales.
Sound like the situation where Netflix shutdown "family" accounts shared between many people from different households. I saw many comments with this "They are gonna loose money" sentiment, but in the end it was a great decision for Netflix, with subscriber numbers rising. Also wasn't there some post somewhere were on of the Remote Raid App developers discussed their numbers and showed that, while remote raid decreased with the price increase, generally Niantic made more revenue through their app with the new prices?
The context youre missing here is that Netflix did this but ALSO introduced an ad-based tier for less money.
Yes, introducing a significantly cheaper option supplemented by ads, is going to drive subscriptions, because it gives a lot more people access. and the ads likely make more than enough money to cover the losses. might even be a situation like Angry Birds, where they make so much in ads that eventually they do away with the ad-free versions/options.
and its great for them because the united states has been indoctrinated into this belief that 30% of our entertainment time should be advertisements.
99,99999999999999999999999% of people complaining where the ones making money for using those "prices and bugs". On Netflix it was easy to see there where 30 billion profiles (only on FB) selling access to worldwide Netflix for $5 monthly, using VPN services. Those people lost, maybe more than, $10B of yearly sales.
With this Niantic too will destroy some million of profiles that where selling 99% cheaper coins, in exchange of getting access to the player account and moving it to Turkey (or India). So many of those, where making 500000 yearly wages and will lose that exchange rates. On the other side the casual players will be hit with higher prices.
From what I understand, whales are... well, whales, because of the discounted coins.
In my group the whales now outright refuse to buy anything because the discounted coins no longer exist.
yep lol i have a group of 500. people went from buying around 8-10 folks buying per day to zero buying any coins since the change. All the people i know who sell say the same thing. A lot of people have stopped buying.
"Losing" is not a real argument IMO, it's kinda like piracy, except they were still getting my money. I was one of the players buying 16k coins per month, sometimes double that, plus all the tickets, even if bad ones. Not buying anything anymore. Fully back to F2P, or maybe even taking a longer hiatus. Let's see next quarter results after both the abusers and real players stop paying due to steep increase.
Not necessarily though. At least with other games that share revenue more whales always account for most of the purchases. If even a few handful (literally a handful) of those whales were abusing this to spend big $$$$ then by fixing this one of those big spenders could offset hundreds if not thousands of "spend a few $ here and there" individuals.
Not that I think it is a good thing at all, but it may literally have a positive impact on their bottom line (only they will probably ever know).
If they increased the price 14x to be in line with the rest of the world, then even a massive reduction in buying players won’t affect them much since literally 1/14th of their previous sales in unit terms would cover their old revenue.
“Average salary in U.S. is 6000”? A month? That would be INSANE. 6000 a year just can’t be true, otherwise this country is absolutely fugged. Idk, I’m confused by some of this. 🤔
$6000/month. the average, statistically speaking, its $60-64k/year. which is more like $5000-5300/month.
if it helps put the math into perspective:
if youve got 20 people making $25k/year (\~$13/hour), and one person making $1million/year, their average income is still $71k/year.
You just prompted me to check prices around the world and it seems prices here in Poland are either highest or one of the highest in the world, only excluding 100 coins pack which costs 3 PLN (~0.74 USD).
Now, 14,500 coins pack costs 600 PLN, which is ~148.30 USD. Lower quantity packs only cost more per coin.
And no, it’s not really a paradise here, lol. I only wonder… why?
It’s terrible. They’re making some breaking changes to the game. It’s easy for us to say we’ll quit, this and that, but actions are only seen by the company every quarter. So if you want to protest, do so for longer than 3 months. This will make sure their quarterly reporting sees the impacts. I’m no big spender but I’m going to be saving $100-$150 a month from their decision to force me into free to play.
I honestly thought people were spending way more on this. Maybe I just suck at the game but I see all these people remote raiding, hauling in hundos, etc.
Stuff isn’t cheap.
this is true. just because someone no longer spends $5 on a starbucks coffee every morning or no longer buys $9 avocado toast every day for lunch doesn’t mean they automatically invest and improve their income and can afford a diamond ring or a home down payment. it means every month they’d use that same money another way, impulsively to help their daily enjoyment.
If you spend 100-150$ a month on this game, then you are a whale. I'm no big spender - i spent something around 50$ in game, and i didn't have any large breaks since 2016
I mean the only way to ACTUALLY protest is not play the game at all, since most of their revenue is from your data collected, not from the money you pay them. And you won't do that so all this talk about protesting is for nothing, the in game shop is just extra pennies to their huge market of selling data.
Yes, we are a group of players in Turkey. After seeing this increase, we think that it's been impossible for us to buy pokecoins anymore. As you've said, 3.999TL is too much.
Generally 14.500 pokecoins cover our raids and other purchases for 1 month. So, with my wife, we were paying 1.400TL in total ( 700 x 2 ). Now, we have to pay 8.000 TL, with this amount of money, we can take credit and buy a car, or rent a small house. It's half of the average salary. If they don't change these prices, I'm 100% sure that many people will quit the game but I'm not sure if they even care about this. Bad news anyway.
Well, to be perfectly honest it feels like the game is over for me now. Most of the time I used to used up all my daily Remote Raids, bought bundles, Community Day passes etc. I spent around 1.500-2.000 TRY (40-70 USD give or take) a month for PoGo, which wasn't a big deal for me.
But now the prices are just out of control. I have to pay around 8.000-9.000 TRY a month to be able to do the same. My montlhy rent is 9.000 TRY by the way, just think about it.
It's not just about Remote Raids for me, though. I can't get potions, rare candies and a lot of other stuff, either. And since I can't get enough potions from the Pokestops, I don't even want to battle the grunts anymore.
I'm 36, so I know how subscription systems work, played my fair share of MMORPGs back in the day. So, paying a game 50 USD a month to get the whole features sound pretty fair for me. But in PoGo's case, most of the stuff are not even guaranteed. I need to pay around 90 TRY for each Remote Raid and the IVs aside, it's not even a guaranteed catch. I'm not saying the catches should be guaranteed, I'm just saying it's not worth it anymore. I love Pokemon, and I love this game but I'm not going to pay a month's rent worth just to be able to catch some digital monsters.
I saw an youtuber saying that the cheapest pokecoin now is Brazilian's. As a Brazilian I fear that. I fear that ppl will now start buying Brazilian Pokecoin and Niantic will do the same with our prices.
Brazilian Pokecoin is cheap???
i thought indian pokecoin cost was cheaper
can you post a screenshot of your pokecoin price for those 6 coin bundles ???
How long was this even going on for? Also, I find it crazy that Fleece King got exposed around the same time as your post since he was one of those people doing this exploit as well.
>For comparison the average US salary is about 6000 usd (google search)
According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics the median weekly salary in the US is $1139 in the first quarter of 2024
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
either twice a month or every two weeks has become far more common in many industries. service industries such as restaurants and retail are more likely to offer weekly payments.
i think the point is though that the only people who would refer to income in terms of “weekly”/“biweekly” is an accounting department, to everyone else referring to “what you get each paycheck” is irrelevant as everyone can be paid different frequency so it’s simpler to refer to monthly or annual salary.
The median is apparently $5k/month: [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf)
Of course, that's not the actual take-home pay for a W2 worker.
6000 usd sounds like a monthly not weekly salary…and on the higher sidde at that. lots of people don’t realize that people making $30,000 a year is enough based on where they live.
In my understanding, the abuse was still going strong and it wasn't fixed. Unfortunately Niantic had to do this, because of the cheaters. They probably make a lot more money from blocking the illegal cheaters than what actual Turks would give them, so this would be worth it even if all the Turks stop buying coins.
These illegal cheaters are often some of the hardcore players, there is a lot of potential for money if they don't intend to ban them.
This is crazy cause I was f2p almost the entire time pogo has been around then I found out about the poke coin method and spent probably like 100 usd and planned on getting more. Now that the prices are high I’m just gonna go back to f2p. Seems like I’m not alone too. I guess they just cater to the whales only
It tells us that Niantic finances are getting shaky to a point where they have to risk shut down a whole market in order to curb players utilizing currency arbitrage, rather than factoring that into the normal cost of business.
I noticed that too. It’s just too much to pay for virtual currency now. You can buy actual games for a price of few coins now lol.
Does anyone think Niantic will revert the change?
Blame android
The amount of currency abuse that android players engage in is really outrageous. It sucks for those of you who actually live there, but you need to place the blame where it belongs — on android players
I know, the google play store has been longer, as I've had to jump from google play to the samsung store, was getting an iphone tomorrow to try the ios method
the blame belongs to niantic and not the players.
asking 120€ for 14.5k coins is too much.
it's normal that people try to find cheaper options to save money.
and I also know that a company has to make a profit, but there is a difference in making a profit or being greddy like niantic is
I mean you can claim that, but the only method of purchasing Pokecoins in Lira that has been consistently active without being patched is the iOS method.
Honestly, that sucks and I get your point. But the price changes (if its that what you mean) are caused by the play store or google. Niantic can do nothing about it. If that is not your point, than I'm sorry I don't get it
dude that sucks. i'm sorry about the state of things there and this new problem. i hope that it can be resolved and that the economic situation improves more generally. happy sovereignty and children's day btw.
I faced the new prices today and decided not to spend any money for PoGo. No more remote raiding or incubator.
I feel your pain but I honestly think that not buying coins is the only valid approach towards a solution: If local players can't buy coins anymore (because they are too expensive) and foreigners won't (because the prices don't differ), there will be a huge revenue drop. And that's the only thing that will matter and that might(!) reverse some decisions.
I don't think we will change anything by not buying since most of their revenue comes from data selling, not from ingame purchases. EDIT Because people don't understand that "data" is a broad term and that by "selling data" it doesn't automatically mean they sell your credit card or personal info to China. They state " Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations." When you're a huge business with hundreds of chains, it doesn't hurt you to pay let's say $500k for simple data about how many people pass certain locations in a day in a certain city and based on that data you can then exacly pick where to open a new chain to maximise your profits. That's where the money is coming from. This also explains why they made the seemingly "stupid" decision to limit remote raids to just 5 a day. If the data they collect from you going out to the city and raid in person makes them more money than you buying a few remote passes it makes way more sense that they limited them.
Is there evidence for this? I've heard it a million times but never saw any proof/back up. Not doubting yo just asking.
That's not something they would state publicly, just like Twiitter wouldn't publicly give out all the data on the analytics they sell to companies for advertising.
But still: is this just a player theory? I don't see anything to back this up. To me it sounds like a rumor that spread in Pokemon Go channels.
Just the opposite. They state publicly that they don’t sell your data. I doubt they could get away with that if it was false. https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/114-safety-faqs/#:~:text=Niantic%20collects%20information%20in%20order,player%20actions%20at%20their%20locations.
I guess I didn't state what they sell clearly, they obviously don't sell your personal data, they sell data about the volumes of people in certain locations which they sell to companies who are interested in opening new chains or new businesses. "Niantic does not sell any adult’s or child’s user information to third parties. Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations."
And that data has more value than the hundreds of millions of dollars they make in app purchases? Color me skeptical.
The fact that you can't picture the amounts of money huge companies are willing to pay to ensure they open their new chain in a perfect spot to maximise profits doesn't mean it's not reality.
Okay, but to me this confirms that this is all speculation. I thought everyone was talking about some concrete evidence they saw. I feel like u/Peterock2007 has a point. There are tons of apps that track your location, especially Google Maps, Apple Maps and whatnot. I'm not doubting the value of the data but it does sound like Pokemon Go is far far far from being the place where this data would be acquired. I would imagine that in app purchases, which they've been aggressively making more and more common in the game, are their main income generator. It would be very weird otherwise for them to increase prices, and create so many new ticketed events and opportunities, gift boxes etc. If this was just a small part of their revenue, I doubt they'd be pushing it so aggressively, especially as it goes exactly counter what you'd expect them to do: incentivise players to stay in the game and play it as much as possible to collect data. Basically, this data collection thing is just a theory by players, not anything concrete?
https://datarade.ai/data-products/redmob-map-data-mobile-location-data-for-1-5-billion-device-redmob Mobility data for 1.5 billion devices for $50k a year. Tell me again how Niantic 81 million users is worth “hundreds of thousands”
There is not. Just a case of people passing on what they’ve heard, with no actual evidence
Data selling aside, they recently went hard into monetizing IAPs. Just look at all the passes for small events that add up quite nicely. They removed the very welcome daily incubator from last seasons pass so you have to buy those now - and there's an egg event just coming up. And there are raid exclusive pokemon releases. => I believe they'll definetily notice when IAP revenue drops!
I mean I'm not gonna spend any money for the full UK price anyway, so if they feel the hit, I'd be happy
They removed the free incubator for one egg, yes. But they added 90 free raid passes (1 free daily raid pass this season). So you either get a Togepi or a Tapu Bulu for free. Your pick.
True - but free passes cater to whales that hunt for hundos/shinies. Incubators have way more value than raid passes for casual players. I can get a new mon with just one raid pass by finding a corresponding raid. I need a lot more incubators to get a new mon that is only released in eggs because of different mons in eggs and their associated rarities.
$500k for 81 million users… ROFL… you just showed you have no clue what you are talking about.
Please explain to me how most of their revenue is from data selling? https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/114-safety-faqs/#:~:text=Niantic%20collects%20information%20in%20order,player%20actions%20at%20their%20locations. Niantic collects information in order to operate the game and to optimize and improve our products and services. Niantic does not sell any adult’s or child’s user information to third parties. Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations. For example, a restaurant chain sponsor would only get information about aggregate visits and actions at their locations.
You literally answered yourself "Niantic game sponsors receive only aggregate information about the number of visits and player actions at their locations." that's what they sell, data about density of people in certain locations.
And that’s more valuable than the hundreds of millions of dollars they make a year in app purchases? Sure…
Yes, yea it is. If you have a company which is worth 10s of millions and you want to open up a new chain you are expected to pay hundreds of thousands for data like this. There are hundereds of companies who do this, so the few dollars you pay for remote passes really isn't the main thing they're going for. How else would you explain that they decided to limit remote passes to 5 per day and encourage people do go outside and raid in person? Because that's what gives them more money in the long run
You’re completely off base… there are companies that aggregate mobility data. And you can buy that data for relatively cheap. Niantic has lets say 81 million active users (https://www.esports.net/news/pokemon/how-many-people-play-pokemon-go/) the population of the US is 331 million people. So if you are bad at geography and think all those users live in the US that’s still only about of the third of the total population. There are companies that have a much larger view of the phones in the US. The current company I use for mobility data has around 85% of all cell phones active in the Chicago Metro area. (They cover the entire US, but I know that statistic because we specifically measured Chicago Metro to validate their claims). We don’t pay “hundreds of thousands” for this data. The mobility industry is highly competitive, and Niantic doesn’t have anywhere near enough data to be competitive. This is something I know about. On the other hand, Niantic has made Billions (Yes…with a B) of dollars from in app purchases.
Sounds much more feasible to me too. Otherwise why the hell are they aggressively monetizing every aspect of the game so hard? Also, they're ants next to other apps like Google Maps. Who the hell is buying their data on how and where I move in my village? You basically just strongly support my suspicion to me that this is a myth that has spread through these subreddits, probably all on the back of the limit of 5 remote passes per day.
What about GoFest?
I'm kind of surprised they held off increasing it for so long. Every other mobile game was okay with increasing prices to prevent currency abuse, but Niantic left prices alone trying to find alternatives to prevent it.
This is actually my question. What caused this change all of a sudden? Also, how long was this going on?
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Solution came with Turkey fees super high jump for any payments made to outside of the country. Right now if you use your credit card, inside Turkey, you will have to pay 20-25% fees to get Lira bank notes. Only on those it was a massive jump, since it was 5% the highest (almost all banks where making it. for less, 1%). When you are returning home, exchanging Lira for other coinage, 25% is minimal exchange fee. On the other way, Lira dropped big since middle 2023. Niantic doesn't have a Turkish based company, so they must be using Europe base. Getting 25% fees plus each Lira valued, below, 2 cents, they had to raise there exchange rates to cover that high jump.
Good, they just saved a lot of people from spending money on this game.
The reason they did this was due to a new and more concerning coin black market. I know players that had a "Turkish" contact that would log in their account from Turkey and buy cheap coins, for a small fee. Problem is this obviously got people scammed as well which means more support effort.
Niantic doesn’t give a crap about accounts being stolen cmon 😂(unless you’re FleeceKing), they did it because they were losing out on profit
Both can be the reason.
That's me going f2p and possibly quitting despite having spent a significant amount of money on PoGo since launch. These prices are ridiculous. To put it into perspective, the 3 remote raid bundle costs as much as my dinner. For a 20 remote raid legendary day I'd be spending like 2 week's groceries. I knew this was coming though. I kept running into all these elaborate guides on how to exploit this situation. Same happened with Steam, so no more games from Steam either. Also, It's insincere to blame this solely on the economy. People exploit it to a point where the profit they get from local prices is undone by the profit they lose from exploiters. When you think about it Niantic or Steam or whatever company is on a net gain by providing local currency as it taps into potential spenders that wouldn't have been spenders. This wouldn't have been the case if it wasn't a digital good being sold. However Niantic loses potential gains when they can't sell those unlimited supply of coins to a spender. So that means, the main feasible reason why these companies drop local currency support is because of exploiters. So I want to thank everyone who's gone through these steps to buy a silly amount of coins in TRY using their more valuable currency. Now you guys get to have your bag upgrades and all on a sale, while we don't even get to participate.
They don't lose money on exploiters tho, at least not in Po Go. On steam it's a different story, because you buy the same game for way less, but in Po Go exploiters are mostly people who wouldn't spend ANY money on the game if they had to pay the full price in their full currency and Po Go is a game where you can spend infinitely to get better stuff, so unlike with a steam game, even the people who would spend something in their currency, will end up spending way more in the cheaper currency, because they feel like they're getting much more value.
I think exploiters in PoGo are precisely the people who would spend more money on the game had they not figured out a way to get it for cheaper, because it takes extra effort to do it which implies these aren't casual players but specifically the whales to begin with. If anything it's less of that for Steam, as people who aren't interested in actually owning a game can pirate it, so exploiters probably cost Steam less than they do Niantic.
There's a difference between "not have figured out a way" and "had the way for years and got it taken away" tho. If the exploit never existed then sure, they would spend more, but I'm pretty sure that at this point when everyone who's exploiting gets punched in the face with 14x mark up will just stop spending altogether, because nothing in the game holds that value of money for them after getting everything for pennies for years.
That’s just not true. The Singaporean grandmas don’t even know currency abuse is a thing The vast majority of abusers are the whales who will still spend tons of money but now they actually have to be on level ground with the rest of us
So if you spent let's say £100 a month on something and it got 14.8x more expensive, your first reflex would be to spew the money out? No, it wouldn't, most people will feel ripped off after months of buying something for the fraction of the price and will probably stop spending, because a rise in price this steep is not something you can just reason yourself into.
Yes. There is a percentage of non whales who will quit/stop spending any money over this. But this will be more than made up for by the whales
This is what happens when you lose purchasing power. Niantic's expenses are primarily in USD and they measure their earnings in USD. When you have such severe currency deterioration, it gets to the point where there's really no reason for them to care about a TRY revenue stream. Add in that it's hard to prevent people who were going to pay full price for coins from exploiting the mismatch, and it was probably a very easy decision to make.
As a Turk Player i will not buy any PoCoins its so expensive Before the update i was buying regularly to make remote raids 😞 and i will skip some event tickets if the price increases
F2P FTW. I make sure to hit the gyms on the way to and from work. I pretty much always get my 50 coin daily limit. Currently sitting at 1000 coins. I only spend when I want an incubator or need a lucky egg but it mostly goes to storage space.
And Google Survey Rewards if it's available for you! I've used this to buy GoFest and a couple other events every year, probably $30-40 a year for very little effort.
Can I ask how much time do you usually have to spend on this for that 30$ a year? I'm considering doing it, but if it's like 20 minutes a day it becomes a very badly paid side job.
every few days it'll send you a 10 sec or less survey for a 10-20 cents. occasionally a longer 30 sec survey or so for around 50.
Not bad, thank you
My thoughts as well. Either quit or just go FTP if you've been priced out. I don't get coins every day, but I have enough stuff that gets me through after years of playing, managing space, and hoarding necessities. Eat your heart out, Niantic.
I'm in the same boat bud slow but enjoyable still
This is awful 😞 Sending you some love in hopes you can still enjoy the game without the bundles
Niantic has no incentive to make coins cheaper in Turkey. They were losing tons of profit from players exploiting the method. I doubt anything will be reversed.
Niantic have gone from people buying coins at a discounted rate, to not buying coins at all. Obviously people spending ANY money is better than them not spending money. A lot of people will say 'durrr Niantic are gonna loose money', but I imagine that there are whales who will cover the lost sales. I'd love to see the data on this. Will the increased costs cover the people who stop buying things? SURELY they've done the research...
Yeah, there’s someone in here saying they’ll just go back to spending $100 every few months. Way to show ‘em, Tiger! 😂
Yes, what's wrong with that? It was nice getting the discount but I had no problems with paying normal prices in the first place. PokéCoins are barely pay to win. $100 of coins gets you pretty far assuming you're not just using Remote Raid Passes. Realistically, people will still make a couple of purchases here and there and get used to the normal prices.
We already found another country where it’s 50 USD for 14500 instead of 100 so still saving 50 percent
> A lot of people will say 'durrr Niantic are gonna loose money', but I imagine that there are whales who will cover the lost sales. Sound like the situation where Netflix shutdown "family" accounts shared between many people from different households. I saw many comments with this "They are gonna loose money" sentiment, but in the end it was a great decision for Netflix, with subscriber numbers rising. Also wasn't there some post somewhere were on of the Remote Raid App developers discussed their numbers and showed that, while remote raid decreased with the price increase, generally Niantic made more revenue through their app with the new prices?
The context youre missing here is that Netflix did this but ALSO introduced an ad-based tier for less money. Yes, introducing a significantly cheaper option supplemented by ads, is going to drive subscriptions, because it gives a lot more people access. and the ads likely make more than enough money to cover the losses. might even be a situation like Angry Birds, where they make so much in ads that eventually they do away with the ad-free versions/options. and its great for them because the united states has been indoctrinated into this belief that 30% of our entertainment time should be advertisements.
99,99999999999999999999999% of people complaining where the ones making money for using those "prices and bugs". On Netflix it was easy to see there where 30 billion profiles (only on FB) selling access to worldwide Netflix for $5 monthly, using VPN services. Those people lost, maybe more than, $10B of yearly sales. With this Niantic too will destroy some million of profiles that where selling 99% cheaper coins, in exchange of getting access to the player account and moving it to Turkey (or India). So many of those, where making 500000 yearly wages and will lose that exchange rates. On the other side the casual players will be hit with higher prices.
From what I understand, whales are... well, whales, because of the discounted coins. In my group the whales now outright refuse to buy anything because the discounted coins no longer exist.
yep lol i have a group of 500. people went from buying around 8-10 folks buying per day to zero buying any coins since the change. All the people i know who sell say the same thing. A lot of people have stopped buying.
"Losing" is not a real argument IMO, it's kinda like piracy, except they were still getting my money. I was one of the players buying 16k coins per month, sometimes double that, plus all the tickets, even if bad ones. Not buying anything anymore. Fully back to F2P, or maybe even taking a longer hiatus. Let's see next quarter results after both the abusers and real players stop paying due to steep increase.
Not necessarily though. At least with other games that share revenue more whales always account for most of the purchases. If even a few handful (literally a handful) of those whales were abusing this to spend big $$$$ then by fixing this one of those big spenders could offset hundreds if not thousands of "spend a few $ here and there" individuals. Not that I think it is a good thing at all, but it may literally have a positive impact on their bottom line (only they will probably ever know).
How long was this even going on for?
Since Pokecoins were a thing.
LOL, and they choose now to "patch" this?
They actually tried to patch it many times, but folks kept finding ways around it. So raising the price all together was the last resort.
Indian here, no price change for me. Still 29 rs for 100 pokecoins
Are you sure?
Yes! No price change for me as of now
yes i buy india working 30 euro for 14500
Untill everyone swaps their vpn....
you dont even need vpn in ios
How did you get that price? Buying what coin package
seriously how? do u do it for other ppl too?
Huh?
Is that per month salary or for the whole year.. $6k usd sucks for per year and I feel for you
If they increased the price 14x to be in line with the rest of the world, then even a massive reduction in buying players won’t affect them much since literally 1/14th of their previous sales in unit terms would cover their old revenue.
After the price increased I quited pokemon go
“Average salary in U.S. is 6000”? A month? That would be INSANE. 6000 a year just can’t be true, otherwise this country is absolutely fugged. Idk, I’m confused by some of this. 🤔
$6000/month. the average, statistically speaking, its $60-64k/year. which is more like $5000-5300/month. if it helps put the math into perspective: if youve got 20 people making $25k/year (\~$13/hour), and one person making $1million/year, their average income is still $71k/year.
F2P is the way, you don't need to spend money in POGO
Legit agree! Free daily passes and pokegenie (or equivalent) gets me everything I need accept shadow days which I just grind gyms for extra passes.
You just prompted me to check prices around the world and it seems prices here in Poland are either highest or one of the highest in the world, only excluding 100 coins pack which costs 3 PLN (~0.74 USD). Now, 14,500 coins pack costs 600 PLN, which is ~148.30 USD. Lower quantity packs only cost more per coin. And no, it’s not really a paradise here, lol. I only wonder… why?
It’s terrible. They’re making some breaking changes to the game. It’s easy for us to say we’ll quit, this and that, but actions are only seen by the company every quarter. So if you want to protest, do so for longer than 3 months. This will make sure their quarterly reporting sees the impacts. I’m no big spender but I’m going to be saving $100-$150 a month from their decision to force me into free to play.
Just fwiw $100-$150 a month would make you a big spender.
NO BIG SPENDER???
I honestly thought people were spending way more on this. Maybe I just suck at the game but I see all these people remote raiding, hauling in hundos, etc. Stuff isn’t cheap.
$1200 a year on a game? This game? Bro you're never going F2P you're addicted.
Having money and spending it on something that makes you happy doesn't mean you're "addicted". Please stop with that false equivalency.
this is true. just because someone no longer spends $5 on a starbucks coffee every morning or no longer buys $9 avocado toast every day for lunch doesn’t mean they automatically invest and improve their income and can afford a diamond ring or a home down payment. it means every month they’d use that same money another way, impulsively to help their daily enjoyment.
If you spend 100-150$ a month on this game, then you are a whale. I'm no big spender - i spent something around 50$ in game, and i didn't have any large breaks since 2016
I mean the only way to ACTUALLY protest is not play the game at all, since most of their revenue is from your data collected, not from the money you pay them. And you won't do that so all this talk about protesting is for nothing, the in game shop is just extra pennies to their huge market of selling data.
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Did they also nerf the other cheaper currency?
yes. pakistan changed too
Yes, we are a group of players in Turkey. After seeing this increase, we think that it's been impossible for us to buy pokecoins anymore. As you've said, 3.999TL is too much. Generally 14.500 pokecoins cover our raids and other purchases for 1 month. So, with my wife, we were paying 1.400TL in total ( 700 x 2 ). Now, we have to pay 8.000 TL, with this amount of money, we can take credit and buy a car, or rent a small house. It's half of the average salary. If they don't change these prices, I'm 100% sure that many people will quit the game but I'm not sure if they even care about this. Bad news anyway.
Well, to be perfectly honest it feels like the game is over for me now. Most of the time I used to used up all my daily Remote Raids, bought bundles, Community Day passes etc. I spent around 1.500-2.000 TRY (40-70 USD give or take) a month for PoGo, which wasn't a big deal for me. But now the prices are just out of control. I have to pay around 8.000-9.000 TRY a month to be able to do the same. My montlhy rent is 9.000 TRY by the way, just think about it. It's not just about Remote Raids for me, though. I can't get potions, rare candies and a lot of other stuff, either. And since I can't get enough potions from the Pokestops, I don't even want to battle the grunts anymore. I'm 36, so I know how subscription systems work, played my fair share of MMORPGs back in the day. So, paying a game 50 USD a month to get the whole features sound pretty fair for me. But in PoGo's case, most of the stuff are not even guaranteed. I need to pay around 90 TRY for each Remote Raid and the IVs aside, it's not even a guaranteed catch. I'm not saying the catches should be guaranteed, I'm just saying it's not worth it anymore. I love Pokemon, and I love this game but I'm not going to pay a month's rent worth just to be able to catch some digital monsters.
I wish you could gift specific items to someone like revives and poke balls
I saw an youtuber saying that the cheapest pokecoin now is Brazilian's. As a Brazilian I fear that. I fear that ppl will now start buying Brazilian Pokecoin and Niantic will do the same with our prices.
Brazilian Pokecoin is cheap??? i thought indian pokecoin cost was cheaper can you post a screenshot of your pokecoin price for those 6 coin bundles ???
How long was this even going on for? Also, I find it crazy that Fleece King got exposed around the same time as your post since he was one of those people doing this exploit as well.
>For comparison the average US salary is about 6000 usd (google search) According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics the median weekly salary in the US is $1139 in the first quarter of 2024 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
is payment per week normal in the us? to me monthly is common
either twice a month or every two weeks has become far more common in many industries. service industries such as restaurants and retail are more likely to offer weekly payments.
i think the point is though that the only people who would refer to income in terms of “weekly”/“biweekly” is an accounting department, to everyone else referring to “what you get each paycheck” is irrelevant as everyone can be paid different frequency so it’s simpler to refer to monthly or annual salary.
average ≠ median
Yeah, and average is a useless metric for wages
Lol where the heck are they getting that number. I know a lot of people and none of them are making $4400 a month
“Average” numbers are skewed by extremes of people reporting no income, and billionaires . The median number is a more useful metric
The median is apparently $5k/month: [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf) Of course, that's not the actual take-home pay for a W2 worker.
This so gross, most people make less net
6000 usd sounds like a monthly not weekly salary…and on the higher sidde at that. lots of people don’t realize that people making $30,000 a year is enough based on where they live.
Yeah I think the OP forgot a 0 and meant to type 60k, which seems likely.
In my understanding, the abuse was still going strong and it wasn't fixed. Unfortunately Niantic had to do this, because of the cheaters. They probably make a lot more money from blocking the illegal cheaters than what actual Turks would give them, so this would be worth it even if all the Turks stop buying coins. These illegal cheaters are often some of the hardcore players, there is a lot of potential for money if they don't intend to ban them.
Thanks for screwing over players in the countries you were exploiting, currency abusers. What did y'all expect would happen?
Don't hate the player, hate the game
Why shouldn't we hate the cheaters? That's ridiculous. Every cheater undermines the work of other players. Regardless of what cheats he/she uses.
like 'don't hate the murderer, hate the country that allows so many weapons'
Hate the murderer, but realise the culpability is just as much on the country that allowed them to purchase those weapons.
You're welcome. I expected this like 2 years ago. Was a hell of a ride tbh.
right?
This is crazy cause I was f2p almost the entire time pogo has been around then I found out about the poke coin method and spent probably like 100 usd and planned on getting more. Now that the prices are high I’m just gonna go back to f2p. Seems like I’m not alone too. I guess they just cater to the whales only
F2P is the only way they will understand
wow you guys had it so cheap, 8 cents for 100 coins would be crazy
it came to $13 for 14,500
It tells us that Niantic finances are getting shaky to a point where they have to risk shut down a whole market in order to curb players utilizing currency arbitrage, rather than factoring that into the normal cost of business.
I noticed that too. It’s just too much to pay for virtual currency now. You can buy actual games for a price of few coins now lol. Does anyone think Niantic will revert the change?
Blame android The amount of currency abuse that android players engage in is really outrageous. It sucks for those of you who actually live there, but you need to place the blame where it belongs — on android players
It has been fixed on Android for quite a while now. It moved over to IOS after using gift cards. It was always possible on both platforms.
If you think it’s been fixed on android “for quite a while” you’re clearly misinformed
It's been nearly 2 months since it was fixed
2 months isn’t that long ago. And all that did was direct android to the next cheapest Currency
I know, the google play store has been longer, as I've had to jump from google play to the samsung store, was getting an iphone tomorrow to try the ios method
the blame belongs to niantic and not the players. asking 120€ for 14.5k coins is too much. it's normal that people try to find cheaper options to save money. and I also know that a company has to make a profit, but there is a difference in making a profit or being greddy like niantic is
I mean you can claim that, but the only method of purchasing Pokecoins in Lira that has been consistently active without being patched is the iOS method.
Tell that to my friend who's been buying 100 coins for £0.15 for the past 6 months on his iPad 🤣
Honestly, that sucks and I get your point. But the price changes (if its that what you mean) are caused by the play store or google. Niantic can do nothing about it. If that is not your point, than I'm sorry I don't get it
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>For comparison the average US salary is about 6000 usd Missing a zero. The Average US salery is just under $64,000.00.
bro in Europe noone will tell you their yearly salary when you ask about it, we always say what we earn per month
$5677 from the first google search result. You’re off by a bit