I get why people are upset and frustrated with this challenge. But what I don’t get is the constant anger and vitriol in order to get some rewards. Niantic have access to data that none of us have and have adjusted the thresholds accordingly. It isn’t going to please everyone. It is unfair on the staff, the ambassadirs and every one else who participated when a few members, some who have no prior history on here, demand things that they wouldn’t demand in any other scenario. It 's almost likr going into a shop for the first time, can’t find what you are looking for only to find out it has sold out and demanding compensation because the item was popular.
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Hey again everyone,
just a quick follow-up from my side (and my last post on this, I promise – I don’t want to spam, but I felt this was important to add):
In the meantime, I received three replies from Niantic Support regarding my individual case — but unfortunately, none of them actually addressed my issue.
My mistake was that I accidentally created the same ticket twice. One of them was closed with the message that the original ticket would continue. However, I can no longer see the original ticket in the Wayfarer support chat, and I also never received any email about it.
When I asked Support to resend the answer or check the case, I only received a generic reply saying that “everyone will receive their rewards soon” — which completely missed the point of my question.
A third reply said they would “forward my feedback to the team”, but again no solution or real engagement with the actual problem.
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed with the way Support handled this. I had hoped that a company like Niantic would at least properly read cases like mine and treat them fairly.
At this point, I’m simply hoping that Niantic will still find an acceptable solution or fair compensation for all affected reviewers.
(If this has already been confirmed somewhere, I sincerely apologize — I couldn’t find any clear statement about it in the thread.)
Thanks again for your time, and best of luck to everyone!
Hopefully we all get some good news soon.
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Firstly, I am sorry that you had a poor experience with Niantic Support. I am not privvy to the conversation, so am not going to take sides.
Secondly, Niantic had changed the Rewards at least once and the threshold twice. Whilst I am sympathetic towards those who were not on this site when they were doing the reviews, I am not sure what more Niantic could have done to make this site known. Could they have used the likes of X and their respective websites to communicate better and encourage people to come on here? I might buy into that argument. This was what was posted on X.
So could Niantic kept on pushing this? Sure. I can buy into this argument. Not everyone uses X, so am unsure if it would have done enough. Niantic doesn’t endorse, as far as I know, Discord as an official medium, as with Whatsapp and Reddit. If I am mistaken, I’ll be happy to apologise.
Niantic shouldn’t lower the limit threshold any more than what they have done already. Not to punish those who didn’t use the forums, but not to devalue the rewards for everyone who managed to get the required numbers, and also those who just missed out of the revised numbers before the challenge was cut short with short notice.
If Niantic did provide some form of compensation, such as 5 Lure Modules / 5 Incense, I wouldn’t have an issue. But I wouldn’t want the current advertised full awards to be downgraded any further than already has been. Not saying this because I am not being sympathetic, but it’s not fair on those who put in the effort to find out that all they needed to do is a small number just to get the rewards.
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Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply!
I completely understand your points, and I agree with a lot of what you said — especially about not further lowering the thresholds, so as not to devalue the efforts of those who completed their goals.
However, what frustrates me (and what I tried to express) is not that I missed information in general. I was aware of the challenge, actively participated, and even stayed up late on April 22nd to keep reviewing. My plan was to finish my remaining reviews the next day, because according to the original timeline, the challenge was supposed to end on April 23rd, 9PM CEST.
The issue is that the announcement about the early end came around midnight (CEST) — meaning when people in Europe were already sleeping. I literally went to bed 1-2 hours before the early ending announcement was posted. When I woke up, the challenge was already over.
It wasn’t a lack of communication channels for me. It was the extremely short window between the announcement and the event’s sudden closure, which made it impossible to react — no matter how active or informed you were.
And that’s what made the experience so disappointing: I did put in effort, I was on track, and I had plans based on the original timeline — but I had no fair chance to adapt to the change.
I’m not demanding that the thresholds be lowered even more. I would simply hope that Niantic recognizes that the timing of the announcement was problematic for parts of the world, and maybe offers a small goodwill gesture for those who were very close.
Thanks again for your understanding! I really appreciate being able to discuss this here in a respectful way.
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Just to give you context, I am based in the UK. So I went to sleep a bit early on the day the challenge was closed off early. Granted, I already hit the lower and upper target, but I was a little bemused / frustrated by the timing of the closure of the challenge. 2 hours doesn’t seem a lot, but with the information Niantic had, and with the comments made on this Forum from people who were doing the challenge, Niantic felt it was appropriate for the challenge to end earlier than anticipated. It’s impossible for Niantic to cover every popular Social Media Platform, even if they wanted to, they couldn’t, and even if they did, there will be some people who will still complain. (Not intentionally saying you are complaining fairly or unfairly). Niantic made the decision based on the information they had at that moment. Could they have known the backlash was going to ensue? They probably did know. I’m not entirely sure what Niantic could do to remedy the issue here and what would be a suitable compensation.
The rewards will be issued by the Pokemon Go / Ingress team. I am guessing it will be up to the respective teams if something could be offered…I’m not sure.
Waits for @cyndiepooh’s response
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ty for the respectful tone! i hear you, and agree that just stopping it caught us all unawares. in order to try to make that a less bitter pill to swallow, i have been pointing out that there just weren’t any reviews left to do. and it seems to me that just stopping it was the kinder solution than allowing folks to continue to miserably sit through the bouncing balloon and wait and hope for a review to show up, when they were not going to be able to find them.
those of us who play pokemon go are very used to niantic offering a make-good when they have messed up an event, so i totally get folks asking for that. i think the lowering of the threshold for rewards was the make-good niantic came up with. what would you feel is a more appropriate make-good offer?
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For me.. unlimited Jelly Beans… nothing else comes close!
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@cyndiepooh @P1dg3ySlayer
Thank you both again for the respectful and understanding responses! I really appreciate it.
I totally understand the point that Niantic wanted to avoid players sitting frustrated in front of a “no available reviews / good work, come back later” or bouncing balloon screen. That makes sense.
However, from my own experience during the final evening, there were still nominations available in some countries. For example, I managed to review about 70-80 nominations in Bulgaria after almost finding nothing elsewhere. So at least in some regions, the system was still providing reviews, and it wasn’t completely “dry”.
Also, there were nominations still waiting in the queue, including my own submissions. Interestingly, after the challenge ended, some of my nominations that had been stuck in queue for days immediately moved into voting — which makes me feel that Niantic could have helped keep the review flow going a bit longer, by pushing more of the queued nominations into voting earlier.
Because of that, I still feel that it would have been fairer to:
- Only lower the thresholds without ending the challenge early,
- Or give more warning time — not just a few hours before stopping it, when large parts of the world were sleeping.
Of course, I know it’s impossible to make a perfect solution for everyone. But from a participant’s perspective, it felt a bit unfair after putting so much effort in.
As for a “make-good” — honestly, even a small gesture (like lures or incubators) would already help to ease the disappointment a little, without devaluing the rewards for those who completed everything.
Again, thanks for listening and for the open discussion!
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I appreciate the thoughtful way a lot of people have commented. It is not always easy to do so when feeling frustrated.
A lot of individual accounts make real, the issues that have arisen, not some theory, but the impact on fellow wayfinders is clear.
I’m glad this forum has been able to welcome in those that needed somewhere to convey that reality.
The short notice to closure on a global activity, inevitably meant some would be asleep (U.K. person 
) during that notice period….people are always sleeping somewhere on the planet. It’s a relevant point to add.
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I don’t know what could have been a happy medium would / could have been. On here, if Niantic had information available that said “10k submissions in each of the following locations need to be resolved, and Oh… we are planning on ending the challenge early” (or something along those lines) I could see that helping things along until numbers were more manageable and then announce the end of the challenge with more time.
@elijustrying True statement that someone could be sleeping somehwere… unless you are on the Antartica / Artic circle where there is no nightfall!!
I don’t need a lack of light to fall asleep 
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Hi @elijustrying,
just to quickly clarify: My point was not about people always sleeping somewhere, but about the extremely short warning time and how sudden the early end of the challenge was.
I’ll leave it at that for now and will just wait to see what Niantic makes of it.
I hope my feedback might help to bring some positive changes for everyone in the future. Thanks again for the discussion!
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i would love about 20 each tart and sweet apples added to pogo rewards 
just saying (and happy birthday!)
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Via a 6 month Special Research Task where you have to get 800 hearts without taking a break?
The points I am hearing are:
There is disbelief that there were not enough reviews in the system to continue the challenge.
There is a feeling that Niantic could have pushed in-queue nominations into voting for the challenge.
A small reward just for participating would be appreciated.
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I would add that it was already going in the last two days, so I’m not sure if delaying ending the challenge early would have helped as opposed to something such as extending the challenge’s timeframe. Still wish they handled it better and don’t see myself planning on doing too much Wayfarer again because of it.
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Probably out of topic but has another got the rewards yet?
Please see this topic😎
Not received mine yet. As it’s the weekend, I am not going to panic until the day after the cutoff… and when I find out that 499 of my reviews didn’t count… I’ll cry myself to sleep.
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When do we get our rewards ? And how do when get them ? They just drop in our account or a code