Pokemon Go players are mad at one person who missed out on the chance to send a lone Dragonite back home after a long stay at a Pokemon Gym.
Pokemon Go is a free-to-play game with microtransactions that let you upgrade gear or participate in special events. While there is a premium currency (in PokeCoins), you can earn them for free by defending Pokemon Gyms.
The longer a Pokemon on your team defends a Gym, the more PokeCoins you get. The drawback is that there is a cap of fifty PokeCoins, and you lose access to the Pokemon while it’s defending the Gym, and you can’t recall it until it’s defeated.
This means there’s no point keeping a Pokemon at a Gym after a certain point, but the allure of free PokeCoins means they’re often hotly contested, so it’s rare for defenders to keep their position for long, especially in busy places.
Pokemon Go fans want Dragonite sent home
A user on the Pokemon Go Reddit shared a thread asking if they should have defeated a weakened Dragonite, which had been protecting the Gym for over 253 days. Other users rushed to the thread to ask why it wasn’t returned to its master.
“Whatever you leave there will likely sit just as long or longer. I’m thankful when someone knocks it out the next morning so I can have my s–t back,” one user wrote, while another said, “Mean not to. We just want our 50 coins.”
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“My shiny jolteon got stuck in a gym for 35 days and I almost lost my mind. I’m sure they’re begging for someone to kick them out!,” one user lamented, while another wrote, “They would probably beg you to finally release their Pokémon from prison.”
“I was stuck in a remote gym for three years once…” one user recalled, “I finally drove there (four hours) one day as a special trip, with a friend of a different team colour who agreed to boot me out. They did not install a mon after retrieving mine.”
“You would be doing this person a favour, they are gold many times over.”
Fans have asked Niantic for the ability to recall Pokemon defending Gyms, but that feature has yet to be added to the game. This means that a Pokemon can be lost for weeks, possibly years until the day a brave trainer manages to defeat them and send them home. Hopefully, the same will happen to this Dragonite someday.