Regigigas is Coming to Pokemon Go… If You Pay

Okay, I’m going to be honest right now, Regigigas will be available in EX Raids after Mewtwo. But if you want Regigigas and a special research quest, the same way we received Jirachi, Mew, Meltan and Celebi, then you have to pay for it. For the small price of $7.99, you can buy an item that will allow you to access a special research task that leads you to Regigigas, and also gives you other nice things like a special pose and some premium raid passes.

Well, you would have to pay for it if the special research task item was available in the store, which it’s not yet. I’m having issues trying to find the details for all of this. But the basic gist of it is that you’re buying early access for a legendary Pokemon who is not available yet. For real world money, because you cannot purchase the Regigigas quest with Pokecoins, like you can with normal items.

On the surface, this doesn’t sound too bad, because everyone will get Regigigas from EX Raids eventually. Assuming people actually manage to trigger EX Passes, something that is very hard in smaller regions and is frankly based on luck, as you can be screwed out of an EX Raid Pass should there be a raid on the EX gym when the passes are handed out, and other things like that. But there are other issues.

For example, this gives a Legendary a price. One Legendary and some raid passes costs $8, according to Niantic. And if this new way of giving out new Legendaries becomes a trend, it’s going to make things expensive. Sure, Regigigas isn’t that popular a Pokemon, but this sets a precedence. What if the next Legendary also has an early access pass? What if this is how we’ll get Arceus? Or other, much more popular future Pokemon like the Ultra Beasts and Cosmog? If this special research for Regigigas sells well, I wouldn’t put it past Niantic to do early access DLCs for every other popular Legendary they don’t want to release into raids.

But it also does somewhat piss on the whole free-to-play model a bit. This is basically early access DLCs for a mobile game which already has in-game purchases, which you can only buy with real money, completely bypassing the in-game currency (which is hard enough to get as it is if you live in either a dead town or a busy city). Sure, we’ve been told we’ll be able to get Regigigas eventually, but unless you fork over a hefty amount of cash, we might be waiting ages to be able to obtain the special research and it’s possible to completely miss out on EX Raids, so some players may have to wait until next year during a special event to get Regigigas.

The price is actually pretty steep as well, especially when you consider what you can get for $8. You can buy Minecraft for mobile for a similar price. In the grand scheme of things, $8 isn’t that much, but value for money is a thing. Is early access worth that amount?

And really, the whole research doesn’t make much sense. Because there are rumours that you’ll need to catch a Regice, Regirock and Registeel to be able to do the special research tasks that you paid for (after all, that was how you originally obtained Regigigas). But what if you don’t manage to catch any of them in the week that they’ll be available for raids? I mean, I don’t have a Regirock and I’m a level 39 player… wait, does this mean we’ll end up with the three Regis in research breakthroughs again? Ugh.

Frankly, it all sounds pretty fishy. I don’t know how many people will buy these special research passes, but I hope people don’t, because it seems pretty bloody expensive, just for some raid passes, a pose and a Legendary Pokemon.