Pokémon GO's 'Forever Friends' & Remote Trading: The End of the 100-Meter Leash

For seven years, the “Trading” button in Pokémon GO came with a silent, ironclad asterisk: Must be within 100 meters.

It was a physical tether that defined the game’s local-first philosophy. It created communities, forced real-world meetups, and inadvertently spawned a massive “spoofer” black market where players used modified GPS data to teleport for trades. It was a rule written in the code of the Niantic Real World Platform (now Lightship), hard-coded to ensure that digital assets corresponded to physical proximity. If you wanted that Pachirisu from Edmonton, you had to fly to Edmonton. Or know someone who did.

That era effectively ended this week.

With the introduction of the Forever Friends tier and Global Remote Trading, Niantic has fundamentally altered the game’s social physics. But this isn’t the free-for-all global GTS (Global Trade Station) players dreamed of. It is a highly engineered, friction-heavy system designed to kill the black market while rewarding genuine long-term play.

Here is the technical and economic deep dive into how it works—and why it took until late 2025 to happen.

The Mechanics: How “Forever Friends” Works

The new system introduces a 5th tier of friendship, sitting above “Best Friend.” This isn’t just a badge; it’s a server-side flag that unlocks specific network permissions between two client IDs.

1. The Grind (Time-Gating)

To reach basic “Best Friend” status takes 90 days of interaction. Forever Friends is not time-based in the same linear way.

• Requirement: You must already be Best Friends.
• Trigger: Instead of a daily interaction count, it requires 50 “Quality Interactions” occurring after hitting Best Friend status.
• Quality Interactions: Raiding together, battling together, or Party Play. Simply opening a gift does not count for this tier progress. This forces active, synchronous gameplay, filtering out passive gift-farming bots.

This distinction is critical. Most “Best Friend” farms rely on opening gifts daily, a process that can be automated or done passively. “Quality Interactions” require the game client to be active in a combat state or a shared AR session (Party Play) simultaneously. This is a behavioral filter: “Are these users actually playing together, or just farming XP?“

2. The Remote Handshake

Once the “Forever Friend” flag is active, the 100-meter geofence check is bypassed for that specific pair of User IDs.

• Maximum Distance: Unlimited (Global).
• Connection Protocol: The trade session no longer relies on P2P proximity verification (Bluetooth/WiFi direct handshake). Instead, it runs purely via Niantic’s server validation, similar to a Remote Raid lobby.
• Latency Handling: To prevent “Lucky Trade” sniping or sync errors, remote trades have a 10-second “lock-in” confirmation window, significantly longer than local trades.

Cost & Friction: The Economic Throttle

Niantic knows that unfettered remote trading would destroy the rarity of “Regional” Pokémon (like Relicanth or Pachirisu). To combat this, they implemented a Dynamic Stardust Cost.

$Cost = Base \times (1 + \frac{Distance_{km}}{1000})$

While standard trades cost 100 stardust, a remote trade between New York and Tokyo (approx 10,000km) sees a massive multiplier.

• Standard Remote Trade: ~20,000 Stardust (Prohibitive for mass trading).
• Lucky Remote Trade: The “Lucky” status reduces this cost floor to 800 Stardust, making Lucky Friends the only viable way to trade remotely without bankruptcy.

This is the genius of the system: It binds Remote Trading to the Lucky Friend RNG. You cannot just trade randomly; you have to wait for the “Lucky Friend” proc (approx 1% chance per day), effectively putting a hard rate-limit on global asset transfer.

Technical Deep Dive: Killing the “Spoofer” Economy

The primary reason Niantic avoided this feature for years was the Black Market. Websites sell specific shiny regionals for real money ($20-$50 USD), delivering them via “flyers” (GPS spoofers) who teleport to the buyer’s coordinates.

The “Forever Friends” system attacks this vector on three fronts:

1. Interaction Depth vs. Churn

Spoofing services rely on volume. A seller account teleports to 100 buyers a day, drops a Pokémon, and moves on. The “Forever Friends” requirement breaks this.

• To unlock the trade, the seller would need to raid with the buyer 50 times.
• Raids cost passes (real money or daily limits).
• This destroys the ROI (Return on Investment) for black market sellers. They cannot afford to spend 50 raid passes to sell a $10 Pokémon.

2. The Friendship Graph (Social Graph Analysis)

The persistent link required for Forever Friends creates a graph. If one account is flagged for spoofing, Niantic’s anti-cheat algorithms can easily trace the “Friendship Graph” to identify buyer accounts that have engaged in suspicious high-value transfers with the flagged node.

• Previously: A spoofer traded with a stranger once and deleted them. The link was ephemeral.
• Now: The link is permanent (“Forever”). The “paper trail” is un-erasable. If you buy a Pokémon from a flagged account via this method, you are permanently linked to them in the database as a “Forever Friend,” making ban waves incredibly precise.

3. GPS Fingerprinting

Remote trades likely log the true IP-based location versus the GPS location. Since the trade is officially “remote,” players don’t need to spoof. This allows legitimate players to trade honestly, while removing the incentive for legitimate players to “hire” a spoofer to come to them.

The History of the 100-Meter Leash

To understand why this update is momentous, we have to look at the history of restrictions in Pokémon GO.

• 2016-2018: The Dark Ages: There was no trading. If you caught a 100% IV Dragonite, it was stuck on your account. The community developed informal “lures” to signal rare spawns, but asset transfer was impossible.
• 2018: The Trading Update: Trading launched, but with the strict 100-meter cap. This was a technological limitation as much as a philosophical one. Niantic used Bluetooth handshakes to verify that two phones were physically close, preventing “Man-in-the-Middle” attacks where a server could be tricked into thinking two people were in the same room.
• 2020: The Pandemic Pivot: During COVID-10 lockdowns, Niantic temporarily increased the trade range to 40km. This proved that the server infrastructure could handle non-proximity sessions without crashing, but the feature was rolled back as the world reopened.
• 2021-2024: The Lucky Friend Frustration: The “Lucky Friend” feature allowed guaranteed lucky trades (better IV floors, half stardust cost). However, this created a massive pain point. You could trigger “Lucky” with a friend you met on vacation in Japan, but because you live in London, that “Lucky” status would sit unused forever. It was a notification taunting you with a benefit you couldn’t claim.
• Late 2025: The Forever Update: Finally, the system matures. By linking the remote capability to the highest tier of friendship, Niantic ensures that the feature serves actual friends, not just opportunistic traders.

Analysis: The End of Regional Rarity?

Does this mean Regional Pokémon (like Klefki in France or Comfey in Hawaii) lose their value?

Surprisingly, no.

Because of the “Quality Interaction” gate (50 raids/battles) and the “Lucky Friend” RNG gate (1% daily chance), the throughput of global trading is extremely low.

• Scenario: You want a Shiny Corsola from a friend in Brazil.
• Step 1: Reach Best Friends (90 days).
• Step 2: Do 50 Raids together (Remote Raid Passes cost money).
• Step 3: Unlock Forever Friends.
• Step 4: Interact daily until you hit “Lucky Friend” (1% chance = avg 100 days).
• Step 5: Pay the Stardust tax.

This is a multi-month, high-effort commitment for one single trade. It effectively preserves the rarity of regionals because you can’t just mass-trade them. You hand-pick the specific Pokémon for the specific friend. It changes the economy from a “Commodity Market” (high volume, low trust) to a “Git Economy” (low volume, high trust).

Future Outlook: The “Wonder Trade” Dream?

Will we ever see a blind “Wonder Trade” or a Global Trade Station (GTS) like in the main series games?

Unlikely.

Pokémon GO is a location data platform first, and a game second. A Global Trade Station removes the need to move. It decouples the asset (Pokémon) from the location (The World).

• Value of Travel: If you can get a Tropius from a GTS, you have no incentive to open the game when you visit Africa.
• Local Community: If you can raid remotely and trade remotely, local Campfire groups dissolve.

The “Forever Friends” update is likely the ceiling. It is a concession to the reality of digital friendships—we have friends we’ll never meet in person—but it retains the high friction needed to keep “The World” as the game board.

For now, check your friends list. That Lucky Friend on the other side of the planet is finally more than just a gold nickname. It’s a trade waiting to happen. The 100-meter leash is cut, but the bonds of friendship—and the grind required to forge them—are stronger than ever.