Last weekend, at Go Tour’s in-person events in Tainan and Los Angeles, Pokémon Go surprised players by hosting thousands of people together in Raid lobbies as part of the new Super Mega Raids rollout.
Going by reports across reddit and YouTube, these special encounters hosted between 1,500 to 4,000 players each. Additionally, standard Raid lobbies also saw a boost, expanding to 40 players for most of the event, something which came in handy for the increased difficulty in facing Mega Victreebel, Mega Malamar, and Mega Dragonite.
For context, standard Raids are capped at 20 players, meaning these special Go Tour encounters were up to 200 times the size we’d usually see. The leap in player count had a few snags, however, as some players reported crashes along the way.
These lobbies are the latest in Niantic's experiments at in-person events, as it was something I experienced myself when attending Go Tour Paris in July last year.
As we did our loops around the Parc de Sceaux, there was chatter about an unusual event taking place: Max Battles supporting hundreds of players. These unannounced encounters would happen at irregular times - usually on the hour, but not every hour - at a Power Spot in the middle of the lawn, just about accessible by both sides of the park.
The Gigantamax Inteleon battle I was able to participate in at 11am on the Friday was populated by over 800 players (you can see footage in the embedded video below). As with many of the massive encounters at Go Tour, the Pokémon’s health was scaled up, meaning the dramatic increase in players didn’t necessarily lead to a faster victory. Unlike some of Go Tour battles, however, this encounter went off without a hitch.
These expanded Max Battles weren't exclusive to Paris, either, with similar encounters appearing at the Osaka and Jersey City Go Fest events the weeks prior.
When I got the chance to interview vice president of product Michael Steranka at the end of my time at Go Fest Paris, I asked about these larger-than-usual encounters, and why this appeared to be a test rather than anything promoted ahead of time, especially as things went smoothly in my experience.
"It definitely is a bit of a stress test for us," he said. "This is one of the few opportunities that we have to get hundreds, thousands of players together. But we also know that is a very challenging technical challenge for us to overcome. Facilitating that many simultaneous players in a single game experience, not just in terms of our servers, but in terms of setting up the proper cell network environment here to get such a high density of players connected properly.
"So it's something that we haven't wanted to overpromise to players by promoting it as a, you know, mainstay of the event experience," he continued. "But for those who are interested in participating, I think it's a really cool and fun thing that you can happen to come across."
Steranka added that "we want to work our way up to being able to facilitate these types of really massive experiences over time."
It's quite possible these tests at Go Fest helped iron out the kinks when it came to increasing the number of supported players in Gigantamax encounters later in 2025 (when Eternatus debuted in August, the encounter size jumped to 100 players from 40 previously) and it’ll be interesting to see whether Go Tour’s lobby increases could usher in further changes this year, too - especially in light of 10th anniversary celebrations this summer.
Travel, accommodation, and access to Go Fest Paris 2025 were provided by Niantic.
