'Pokémon GO' Massive Update Adds Friends, Trading and Gifting

By Edward Leano, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, June 19, 2018

"Pokémon GO" is getting a huge update for the summer, as Niantic announced that some of the most anticipated features for the game, Trading and Friends, are now about to be available this week starting Monday, June 18.

"We're excited to share brand-new ways to interact with your friends in Pokémon GO! The Friends feature will start rolling out to Trainers later this week, allowing you to connect with your real-life friends and keep track of their adventures in Pokémon GO," Niantic announced in a new blog post as the start of the week.

"You'll be able to send them items, earn bonuses—and even trade Pokémon!" the post continued, confirming one of the most eagerly awaited features for the mobile game. While all previous "Pokémon" games have supported and highly encouraged trading, it's just now that "Pokémon GO" will be allowing trainers to swap pets.

Adding a friend in "Pokémon GO" is just a matter of swapping Trainer Codes with them. Putting in the Trainer Code of someone in the new Add Friend screen sends them a request, which they can accept so that both players will have each other on their respective Friends lists.

Pokémon trades can only be done between friends, and each transaction will cost them stardust. What's more is that trading can only be done when the game is able to verify that both players are close together.

"We wanted to reinforce the idea that playing with others is important to your pokémon journey," Kirsten Koa, software engineer for Niantic and one of the technical leads on the new features, explained via The Verge.

"I hope we came up with something that's natural and enjoyable," she added. Friendship levels will also be a thing in the game, and increasing it by swapping daily gifts and doing raid battles together will earn both players special rewards and trade cost discounts.