Niantic contextualizes the change as a recent discovery made by the in-game character Professor Willow, who notes Pidgeys, Rattatas, and Zubats will spawn much less frequently in locations where they were previously common.
Professor Willow additionally revealed that Pidgeys and Rattatas will no longer hatch from collected eggs, greatly reducing the number of duplicate Pokémon that players will collect on a daily basis. The Pokémon Eevee also undergoes a change as part of this week’s update, as the creature will now hatch from 5km eggs only.
Though Pokémon Go‘s popularity has cooled after its explosive debut earlier in 2016, the app still maintains an audience of millions of dedicated players worldwide. In recent months, some players have expressed disappointment at the game’s predetermined spawn rate, which distributes a small handful of collectible Pokémon within a given physical space in the real world.
While many players remain committed to collecting all of the game’s featured Pokémon, others gave up the journey after meeting with multiple Pidgeys and Rattatas during their daily crawls for creatures. This week’s update is intended to shake up the game’s creature distribution, and players who once exclusively encountered common Pokémon can now expect to see a better mix of critters in the months ahead.
Zubat similarly became the bane of players who played at night in search of rare nocturnal Pokémon. After this week’s update, nearby Zubats will go into hibernation in order to spur a more even distribution of nighttime creatures.
This week’s distribution shakeup arrives ahead of a forthcoming Pokémon Go update that will reward players with in-game bonuses for daily play. With it, Pokémon Go players will earn bonus experience for catching their first Pokémon of the day and by making daily visits to nearby PokéStops, speeding progression through the game’s ranks.
Pokémon Go is available as a free download from the App Store and Google Play.
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