Here's what we know.
In April of 2020, Remote Raid Passes were added to Pokemon Go, allowing players to invite their friends to participate in Raids remotely, even if they are nowhere near the Gym where the Raid is taking place.
While trainers have been given a few Remote Raid Passes for free, they’re technically premium items that are available to purchase in the in-game store. You can buy a single Remote Raid Pass for the equivalent of around $1, or purchase three for around $2.50.
Remote Raid Passes are a helpful addition to the game, as they can give players in small towns or rural areas more opportunities to participate in Raids if they can’t find or participate in many otherwise.
However, the feature’s rollout wasn’t entirely smooth-sailing, as a major bug caused many players to lose Remote Raid Passes after their Pokemon fainted during a Raid.
The bug went something like this:
When we experienced this bug personally, we were told that we couldn’t rejoin without spending another Remote Raid Pass to do so (we didn’t have one to spend, so we couldn’t rejoin). However, other players have experienced different “reasons” for being unable to rejoin.
The end result is the same, regardless of the specific version of this bug each player encountered: Players lost the Remote Raid Pass they used to participate in the Raid, and they weren’t given an opportunity to catch the Raid Pokemon after it was defeated by the other trainers in the Raid.
In July, Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go, acknowledged the bug on Twitter, and offered a workaround to players. Trainers were told they could re-enter the Raid after they had been kicked back to the main map “by tapping on the raid invite again from the nearby menu.” However, this didn’t seem to work.
Eventually, Niantic said it fixed this bug with update version 0.181.1.
However, if you do a quick search on Twitter even today, the number of players who are still reporting this issue (or issues like it) is pretty staggering, leading us to wonder whether the bug really has been fixed. While it’s true that all of these players could still be running an older version of the game (without the update), this problem is still happening to too many players to simply ignore.
We hope that our overview of this bug will help you make an informed decision about whether or not you want to use a remote raid pass in your own game, or save them just in case.
We’ve reached out to Niantic for an update on this situation, and we’ll update this space if we hear back.
For now, if you experience this bug in your own game, make sure you’re running the latest version of Pokemon Go, and update the game if you’re not. Then, we recommend reaching out to the game’s support team either on Twitter, or through the in-game support chat (tap “Get Support” in the game’s Settings menu), to see if you can receive a free Remote Raid Pass to replace the one you lost.
Have you experienced this Remote Raid Pass bug in Pokemon Go? Did you experience the bug after updating to the latest version of the game? Let us know on Twitter at @superparenthq.
Brandy Berthelson has been writing about video games and technology since 2006, with her work appearing on sites including AOL Games, Digital Spy, and Adweek. When she’s not gaming, Brandy enjoys crafting, baking, and traveling with her husband.
