The Pokémon GO craze seems to have tapered off hard in much of the world… but Niantic knows it can use special Holiday events to bring (some) people back for now while it figures out what — if anything — will bring them back long term.
They did it for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Now they’ve cooked something up for Valentine’s Day.
Here’s what’s happening:
- “Pink” Pokémon (as in, Pokémon that are at least partly pink in appearance) like Clefable, Chansey, and Porygon will spawn more often. Chansey and Porygon are both stupid rare in most regions and spawn without much rhyme or reason, so this is going to make some people super happy. Time to complete that Pokedex!
- “Pink” baby Pokémon are more likely to hatch from eggs picked up during the event; Niantic mentioned Cleffa, Igglybuff, and Smoochum in particular. I still think this baby-Pokémon-only-coming-from-eggs shenanigans is the worst. I get why they’re doing it — I just don’t like it.
- Players will get 2x the normal amount of candy for walking their buddy Pokémon and when catching, transferring, or hatching.
- Lure modules will last for SIX HOURS now, instead of thirty minutes. That’s 12x as long.
That last one is a clever test to run — particularly if Niantic wants to see if they can get people to play together again. Lures are premium, one-time use items placed on Pokéstops to encourage Pokémon to spawn for everyone nearby. They also tend to lure hopeful people to a location, especially if a bunch of closely clustered stops are all lured at once. Now that one lure lasts all night, I’d expect at least some of those once super-popular Pokemon Go spots to light back up — if only for a few days.
Niantic tells me this event will run globally from this morning at 11:00 A.M. PST to February 15th at 11:00 A.M. PST.