Even fantasy worlds are affected by inflation. Niantic Labs, the game publisher behind the hugely famous game Pokemon Goannounced in a blog post that the prices for “in-app” purchases of Pokemon Go would soon increase. Buying Pokecoins for in-game bonuses will soon cost more, whether you’re on Android or iOS.
A news not very well received
This price increase within the game is in fact explained by the general price increase implemented by Apple on the AppStore at the end of last September. In the price grid provided to developers by the company, all the predefined price levels have been revised upwards due to inflation. Thus, a purchase that was worth €0.99 before is now billed at €1.19. With developers being forced to match, the prices of in-app purchases at Pokemon Go logically increased. The famous monster capture game is not the only one concerned, since all Niantic games – and all AppStore games in the long term – have also seen their prices increase, whether Ingress Where Pikmin Bloom.
“Although we are not taking immediate action in response to this change, we will monitor its impact and discuss how to manage changing conditions globally.“Ingress clarifies to apologize in some way for the change in pricing. Naturally, players of Pokemon Go are not thrilled. On Reddit, many Internet users are complaining about this decision, especially Android mobile owners.
Android players also affected
Indeed, Niantic justifies its price increase by invoking Apple’s new pricing policy, but for its part Google has not yet announced such changes. Android players have therefore been paying more since October 5, while Niantic has no obligation to inflate its prices on the platform. Obviously, it is absolutely not excluded that Google decides to increase the prices on its platform also in the next few days and, for questions of game balance, it is not absurd for Niantic to put everyone on an equal footing, regardless of the platform the community uses. But, all the same, the pill seems to have trouble passing on to fans of the game.
It is at least interesting to see that the company is transparent on the subject, even if the explanations given are a bit light. It remains to be seen if other development teams will follow in Niantic’s footsteps and jack up the prices of their games or apps on iOS and Android in the coming weeks.