Pokemon GO Giving Away Free Remote Raid Passes

It was a great move when Pokemon GO introduced Remote Raid Passes to allow players to take part in raids while isolating during the pandemic. Now, Pokemon GO is giving them away for free.

Raids make up a big part of Pokemon GO's endgame, seeing players team up to face off against seriously powerful versions of rare and legendary Pokemon that have taken over a gym that requires players to purchase or earn Raid Passes to participate in. They have multiple tiers of difficulty and have a schedule that is mixed up every month to keep the available Pokemon on a steady rotation. Now, as part of Pokemon GO's stacked schedule of events for April, developer Niantic is going to be giving away some free Raid Passes.

In a recent tweet, Pokemon GO announced that every Monday in April a one-time bundle with "a Remote Raid Pass and more" will be available for players to grab from the in-game shop. While no details are given about just what "and more" may mean, the free Remote Raid Pass more than makes the bundle worth signing in to grab. With Raids featuring some of Pokemon GO's most coveted Pokemon and legendaries, the free Raid Passes will give players a few more opportunities to catch the ones that they want the most.

With everything else planned for the month as well, April looks to be a great time to be playing Pokemon GO. With Pokemon GO's daily Field Research tasks, the return of Team GO Rocket, and themed events that increase the spawn rates of certain Pokemon, there looks to be plenty of content to keep players busy throughout the month. It is also great that the Raid Passes are for Remote Raids, allowing players to jump into any Raid that they can see on their map without physically going to the gym's location so that players can maintain their social distancing.

The Raids do require multiple players to pull them off unless players have some seriously tough Pokemon, so bringing friends along is always a great idea. Luckily, Pokemon GO also launched a new referral program that rewards players for bringing new players in, so that should make getting some new friends to try it even easier. It doesn't look like Pokemon GO is slowing down any time soon, and it is great that they are finding ways to keep players engaged with the game after so long.

While software development company Niantic, Inc. first hit the mainstream in 2012 with its augmented reality game Ingress, its popularity absolutely skyrocketed with the release of Pokemon GO in 2016. Upon its debut, the game became a worldwide phenomenon, bringing Pokemon fans both old and new the monsters they know and love in the real world, with the game maintaining an even larger dedicated player base today.

Since 2016, Niantic has captured the hearts of Harry Potter fans with the AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which also sees a faithful player base, not to mention a recently-announced partnership with Nintendo to bring fans an official AR game based on the Pikmin franchise. Now, it seems that the CEO of Niantic may be teasing the company's next big step, and it looks like it could be huge.