Pokemon Go players shocked by “manipulative” box price theory
NianticThe Pokemon Go Shop offers players many different items alongside special boxes at discounted prices. But some trainers have noticed varying prices in the Shop, which according to them, change depending on how many coins they have tied to their accounts.
In a Reddit post, user ‘callmecalcifer’ asked, “Why do boxes get more expensive the more coins I have? I have noticed recently that when I have coins the boxes often adjust to say more coins than I currently have.”
While the devs have not commented on this player theory, many other Pokemon Go trainers replied to the post by sharing their featured boxes. All of the screenshots show different prices for each trainer, and most of them seem to be related to the amount of PokeCoins they have at the time.
“Every box having a different price for every player seems so illegal,” commented one player. “It’s called personalized pricing and a lot of websites do this when you’re shopping online based on a variety of factors. It’s scummy, keep an eye out!” explained another.
While this wasn’t the case for every Reddit user, most players noticed their boxes are priced slightly above the amount of PokeCoins they have, and theorized that this is meant to “entice people to buy coins.” This led to one player stating they “won’t support manipulative business practices.”
In addition to the varying prices, one player noticed the Starter Box, an offer you can only buy with real money, is priced at $3.99 in their game when it usually costs $2.99.
While hardcore players might not have a problem with this, free-to-play and casual Pokemon Go trainers can only get 50 PokeCoins per day by defending Gyms. So, buying a box that costs up to 9,000 PokeCoins is deemed a tough task.
We recommend spending your PokeCoins on storage upgrades so you can always receive rewards after beating Team Rocket Grunts and Raids during events.