If you want to continue raiding remotely on Pokémon Go, you'll have to get used to paying full price for passes. Niantic has announced that going forward, it's no longer selling them as part of its weekly one Pokécoin bundle like it's been doing the past couple of years. The company introduced its cheap weekly bundle offering in the early days of the pandemic when COVID restrictions prohibited people from going out. Shortly after that, it launched Remote Raid Passes, allowing people to play shared raids in their area without having to leave their homes and having to congregate in groups.
Niantic used to regularly include Remote Raid Passes in its one Pokécoin bundles, but now it'll cost you 100 Pokécoins for a single pass. To earn coins, you'll have to take down or defend a gym, or to pay real money for them. Pokémon Go live game director Michael Steranka told Polygon that the company is hoping to "shift the balance back towards the fun of raiding together in-person again." Niantic has even increased the rewards for in-person raids in an effort to entice you to go out with your friends and play the game like you used to.
In addition, the company has revealed that it's adding new social features to the game in the coming months. Niantic has been testing community features on a standalone application for Ingress players over the past few months, allowing them to communicate with each other for raids and other purposes and to find communities in-app. The developer is expected to reveal more details about the capability's arrival on Pokémon Go at its Lightship conference next week.