Pokémon Go Is Milking Mewtwo Too Hard, Fans Say, After a Lackluster Weekend Event Marred by More Server Issues

There's a feeling that Mewtwo is being milked too hard, as Pokémon Go continues to capitalize on the creature's popularity and monetization potential.

The announcement of yet more Mewtwo coming to Pokémon Go later this year is being greeted with surprising apathy by fans, following a disappointing end of summer event this past weekend marred by yet more technical issues.

Mewtwo raids returned to Pokémon Go this summer after an extended absence, fuelling FOMO ahead of the long-awaited Mega Mewtwo X and Y release at Go Fest events in May, June, and July. Mega Mewtwo was also the star of the game's controversial New York anniversary event, disquiet over which preceded all players being gifted a unique 100% stat Mewtwo.

Go Fest Global in July, the game's biggest annual event, was essentially a Mega Mewtwo raid weekend for all players, which was fine — except for technical glitches that saw raiding impacted over a series of timezones across the world. A makeup event then took place in late July with more Mega Mewtwo offered.

All of which brings us to this past weekend, Go Fest: Mega Finale. There was some new content here — the addition of Mega Chesnaught, Mega Delphox, and Mega Greninja — but players could only acquire one of the three. Otherwise, the event was centered around (you guessed it) more Mewtwo. Mega Mewtwo X and Y returned yet again, alongside the creature's unique Armored Mewtwo version last seen in 2020.

Ahead of this weekend, Pokémon Go developer Scopely Explore stated that Armored Mewtwo would feature, but not yet be available in its Shiny version. Now, the developer has released an Avengers: Doomsday-style teaser video promising Armored Mewtwo will be back yet again later this year — which is when players widely expect its Shiny version to finally arrive, requiring more raiding to try and chase.

Armored Mewtwo isn’t done yet. Keep an eye to the sky for its return later this year. pic.twitter.com/at0UMAWEkB— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) September 7, 2026

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Armored Mewtwo isn’t done yet. Keep an eye to the sky for its return later this year. pic.twitter.com/at0UMAWEkB

For players who may have spent the weekend raiding many Armored Mewtwo while it was available, the announcement it will be back again so soon is being seen as hasty at best, as accusations mount that the game is becoming too greedy, and against a backdrop of more complaints about technical issues.

Scopely Explore has acknowleged that raiding was impacted yesterday due to a "short network disruption that affected raids in the Americas," and gifted two raid passes as compensation. But while the company said it was continuing to monitor the issue, it also began directing further calls for recompense to its customer support team, with mixed reports of success.

"Armored Mewtwo will return in: give us more money," reads one response to the above teaser on top Pokémon Go fan reddit Silph Road. "Doing whatever it takes to milk the players left and right," reads another reply. "They've thrown so much Mewtwo at everyone that people are sick of it now," reads a third.

And the fact that yet another big Pokémon Go event has experienced technical issues has renewed calls for the game to change how it deducts raid passes from players' accounts, which differs from newer in-game battle currencies such as Max Particles and Link Charges. When a player begins a raid battle, their entry pass (free or paid) is taken as soon as the battle begins, which means it must be manually claimed back from the game's customer support team if the battle fails due to technical errors. For newer currencies, these are only deducted at the successful completion of a battle, meaning players don't lose out if something goes awry.

In another lengthy Silph Road thread, there are growing calls for this to finally change, and raid passes to only be deducted when the game detects a battle has successfully been completed. "This predatory practice by Niantic and then Scopely needs to stop," wrote one fan. "Today's debacle still would have resulted in a waste of people's time, which is unacceptable, but at least people's raid passes and money would not have been stolen by this widespread glitch. There is no player-friendly reason for raid passes to be consumed just for entering the raid."

IGN previously raised this issue with Pokémon Go senior producer John Funtanilla, who acknowledged that Max Particles and Link Charges had been built to be consumed following battles as a learning from raids — though there was no suggestion this would retroactively change for raid passes in the future.

"We really pushed for Max Particles not being consumed until you win," Funantilla said earlier this year. "Raid passes, meanwhile, are applied to the gym or Power Spot when you join the battle and that means until you win, you can keep trying. Max Particles and Link Charges [work similarly], so those will be consumed at the end of the battle once you win. That's a key learning that we wanted to carry forward.

"We're constantly talking with the player experience team for raiders, and they're looking at players trying to understand what problems are coming in. So we see that a lot and we try to build ways to reimburse if there's a crash, things like that. I understand it's not the best system, but we're trying to improve it with everything that we put in the game."