Pokemon Go Finally Letting Players Trade and Send Gifts

Pokemon Go Enables Trading

After two years, Pokemon Go is finally getting a trading system. The feature will be part of Niantic Labs‘ large summer update which also includes the new friends feature.

Players can add new friends by sharing trainer codes. If the other player accepts, then they will show up on your friend’s list, which has a current maximum of 200 players. From this pool, players can trade Pokemon and even send gifts to each other. The more players interact, battle and train with other players, the higher their friendship score is. This then unlocks specific rewards across various milestones.

To encourage the new friend feature, some new items are only available through gifting. This includes the new 7km eggs that will house exclusive Alolan pokemon.

Why Did It Take So Long to Implement This Feature?

According to Niantic Software technical lead Kristen Koa, “we wanted to make sure we got this right”. Furthermore, Niantic says that the difficulty lies in maintaining the balance of the core game, while also ensuring that the trading feature is safe. Especially for younger players.

For more information and details, check out the official Niantic blog post about this upcoming update. This update will start rolling out sometime next week, coinciding with the Pokemon Summer tour on June 30th.