If functional is the bar for Pokemon Go players, Scopely’s POGO team has done that again, which… isn’t exciting to say, but I suppose it’s better than saying Go Fest 2025 was bad. Admittedly, my perspective may be a bit different this year, as multiple social circles, gamer groups, and a local event all clashed, scattering my usually centralized Go Fest area/community. While a lot of that is on the people, the POGO team pushed some of us here, and I have a feeling I’m not alone.

So for this edition of Massively on the Go, we’re talking about not just the event but some of the things around the event that may color impressions – and may have changed the communities participating.

The road to Go Fest

Normally I don’t discuss this much, but we need to talk about the pre-event Ancients Recovered event and Gmax raids before we jump into directly discussing Go Fest, as it really helps highlight the state of the game. Let’s start with the good parts: Ignoring the increased limit on remote raid passes (which always feel like the team’s way of admitting it needs raid pass money and the player count, but for most of the year, rurals have to pretend city players aren’t already doing this in person without having to also pay the “rural tax” for the increased cost of remote passes vs. in-person premium passes), I can still say there were a couple of neat things for this event. Having all the Regis get either a special or signature ability was cool, and having free research to get them was nice too. Those who completed the free research essentially got to take another lap through it with the Regi of your choice as the reward. Not bad.

The problem is that the Go Team asked us to do this when people were trying to save passes for Go Fest. A free-to-play player would have to use premium passes the complete the free research just once, so this felt scummy, especially as outside of PvP, the Regis still don’t have much use. Worse, we couldn’t use Elite Charge TMs to “fix” Regis we already caught before the event. And let’s be honest, farming the raids to retrigger the quest was basically just a bonus to whales, further making the game feel like a money pit for those of us looking at core game prices. Even Nintendo’s $80 games are starting to look cheap compared to the cash people spend monthly on POGO. The two tickets affecting this year’s event are $35, but as it’s mainly raiding, the cost goes up depending on your participation level.

In all honestly, the Regis aren’t that hard to beat, they’re just annoying since many are tanky, and their frequent spawns (with no egg-hatch warnings) severely disrupt neighborhood gym agreements. I’m not in any explicit ones, but implicitly, I saw players encroaching on new turf in pursuit of coins or scummy multi-accounters shaving out “allies” to get their other account in. It’s a big reminder that the gym system was a mistake, one that still threatens player safety, not to mention enjoyment. Showcases really should be retooled to take over their job with coin rewards if the Scopely POGO team doesn’t want to actually fix the problem.

The other side of “easy” raid problem, though, was the Gigantamax raids happening at the same time. Unlike their weekend events, these were held during the work/school week. They were not active at all Power Spots, and Max battle raids don’t benefit from the new RSVP Planner. Then, during the event proper, they felt like a distraction, especially since nothing was new, and if there was something new, it may have threatened the rest of the event.

As a reminder, Gmax raids are built for 40 players. You can do them with as few as 10 on average (lower for power players and whales literally paying for temporary power boosts), but the system overall hasn’t gone over well. In fact, I’d still argue that they’ve hurt communities more than they’ve helped them. We did only one on the busiest Go Fest Day, and pooled only 30 people, including remote raids. This is a highly active area, and again, there was a fair going on, which should have increased the odds of getting random help.

As one player I met put it, it’s simply too time-consuming and people are often too unprepared for the battles, so any attempt that isn’t nearly 40 players full can be a major time sink. Local business owners generally know when there’s a POGO event, and they can even get non-players interested, but I feel like when too many of us congregate, like for Gmax raids, it goes the other way. That’s not great, but neither is having a “new” feature that’s seen as less rewarding than, say, catching wild pokemon that have mostly already been released before. It’s probably a sign that the feature is in a bad spot.

While the Scopely POGO team argued otherwise when it told us they had to build local communities before adding remote raid options to Gmax and other formerly “local-only” raids, I’ve heard too many stories of the opposite. By trying to funnel players into fewer spots, the devs ensured those smaller communities were dealt severe, even killing blows. One player I spoke to noticed this, and when I mentioned the Gmax issue, they immediately began to regale me with similar stories of pain and suffering incurred from the feature.

In terms of Gmax content, my most local group is on life support at this point, and several players disappeared once it became apparent. Others attempted to be funneled, but that drained the fun from the game, and they too have largely left. And for Go Fest, my most reliable group didn’t even seem excited to meet in chat, with the half-hearted get together planned receiving nearly no Discord reactions. I still got to see some friendly faces and personally enjoyed certain aspects of the event, no doubt, but it’s best to take a wide view of the event. When new players choose to stay home and lapsed players pass on event tickets, it says a lot.

The event itself

I hinted at this above, but Go Fest proper was a bit of a letdown. Again, Go Fest is usually a raid day, but often there are other spawns that get people hyped, like regionals. The new players I met at the end of last year weren’t tempted at all. Most of the old ones that disappeared didn’t reappear. Gmax was an option a few of us wanted but didn’t want to bother with. People were excited to raid, but I’d also argue that the players who seemed the most excited were also the ones pumping the most amount of money into the game.

I was one of few mostly free-to-play players who seemed excited. I bought both event add-ons and used coins to get some passes, but I didn’t use real money on anything else. I raided far more than I do on average, but it was probably not much more than for the other major events.

Some of the wild spawns were part of the reason I wanted to go out and play (yay Blue Flabebe!), but at the same time, I often had to rely on my autocatcher for that as I tried to do raids. Having a single worthwhile 5-star ‘mon to focus on in raids can sometimes feel less stressful than having too many options, but it also meant that people who couldn’t make that day missed out, and as both Hero Dogs are, ahem, massively overpowered, it felt difficult to be satisfied with a non-perfect ‘mon. My area does play host to people with deep pockets, but free-to-play players noticed the push to raid, and when it was done, there just wasn’t enough going on to stay and play once we were raided out.

Egg hatching was in a weird place I don’t think anyone I spoke to felt strongly about. Not that it was good or boring, just weird. Normally, good event eggs are 10k eggs, outside of Hatch Day events, which historically feature a single ‘mon in 2k eggs. Go Fest, though, is not that event, so putting event-relevant stuff in 2k and 5k eggs was an interesting move. On the one hand, players who paid for the event got some neat stuff like regionals, but half-hatch on only 5k eggs that aren’t meta-relevant feels like a waste of premium incubators and an overall nerf to stardust gains, the latter of which is the main reason I hatch. That being said, it was also far friendlier on people who don’t typically use premium incubators. That basically means that while the egg options were friendlier for free-to-play players, it did turn egg-hatching into another major whaling sport.

And that’s the other end of the raid-focused event. Many of us appreciated premium balls essentially being beast balls, catching raid bosses with ease. That also made it extremely easy to go from raid to raid. I think I used about 80 premium passes over the course of two days, even though I had the Golden Bottle Cap that was supposed to rein me in (it did still help thanks to my awful luck).

I really dislike how a lot of things this year made it feel less like a player event and more of trojan horse into our wallets, but I will say that this also made it easier for me to stick with a group. Hardcore players will sometimes wholly surrender raid ‘mon catch screens if they have to choose between keeping up with the group for the next raid or catching a junk IV ‘mon. I choose the latter because outside of major events like Go Fest, I don’t really pay for stuff. Those 80 passes I used? Paid with free coins or obtained from events throughout the year. I know this is a big raid day, but I often get left behind to catch on my own or with a small group, so it was nice that I could keep up for once. Like the egg pool situation, it’s a weird mix of getting me to open my wallet but also helping certain players.

That being said, my group actively avoided doing Gmax battles. Even when we had a reasonable group of 15, not including people with multiple phones, people just didn’t want to do these, even as several of us tried to rally. That’s going to be really important to remember at the end of this article, at least for my local group, but maybe yours too, if your experience was anything like mine.

Content is always hard to balance, and someone will always be unhappy. Having tickets interact with friends in meaningful ways could help, such as in past events where a party leader with a ticket could allow non-ticket holders to get premium content. We didn’t have that option. Heck, a friend just noticed that despite her having a ticket, trading with a non-ticket holder denied her the 50% off stardust bonus she was supposed to get, not to mention she was still being held hostage to her trading partner’s two-special-trades when her ticket allowed for six, as long as it didn’t bypass a non-ticket holder’s limit. The latter isn’t new but certainly stood out as some of us watch our communities shrink.

And don’t get me started on the raid situation. My newbies have all but left the game, as have many of my vets. Bottle Caps are nice in theory, but not only did they fail to bring anyone I know back, but even those who did buy it almost seemed unsure of its value, not to mention what to actually use it on. Once I used my own, it felt like I had paid for a potential second money pit, as I could be stuck with my buddy for 40 days, and as I’ve said before, the Buddy System is already a massively overburdened system.

I think, for me, the event was “fine,” but longtime players remember things like randomly spawning legendaries and neat storylines with characters we don’t often get much exposition for. Go Fest 2025 didn’t do that. It was rather simple, and while I personally like simple, I think really boiling it down to pushing raids against OP monsters highlights the freemium nature of the game in ways that clearly left a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

Our darkest days were recently announced for August, and that most likely means Max battles, which again means wallet opening. However, if its Gmax focused, I fear it’ll push me back to the other community, which felt more like strangers being pushed together than friendly faces. Pokemon GO is supposed to be about meeting people in the real world, especially for Go Fests, but much as in large raid groups, I feel it’s too easy to get lost in a crowd when content reaches a certain size. The push towards that content also is when conflicting play-types and personalities clash. I used to look forward to Go Fest and summer events in particular, and while Go Fest proper was fine, I’m feeling more anxious than excited about the finale.

Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles! Pokemon Go studio Niantic is considered a controversial gaming company owing to multiple scandals and deceptions, starting with the Wi-Spy privacy scandal; over the years, it’s repeatedly failed to secure player data, endangered players during the pandemic, and refused to address documented stalking in POGO. It also rolled back popular accessibility features to incentivize data collection, faked data, and lied about event results. Following 2021’s community-driven Pokemon No boycott, Niantic vowed transparency and communication; it has not delivered.