Pokémon Go now finally lets players trade creatures from afar — a feature that fans have wanted for almost a decade.

Since Pokémon Go launched in 2016, the game has been hesitant to allow gameplay that does not encourage players to meet up in person. Remote raiding was only added to the game during the era of Covid lockdowns, and trading has remained locked within a small location radius — until now.

Remote trading will still require some work to unlock, with the feature available when in-game friends hit a fresh, fifth interaction tier — Forever Friends — that will require a couple of months more levelling beyond Best Friends (though this can be heavily reduced by completing Weekly Challenges).

Once Forever Friends, you'll get to make a Remote Trade — and there's a clever system for selecting three creatures you'd be happy to swap, while picking one from your friends' selection. Only when both parties are happy with the matchup will the trade take place.

Subsequent Remote Trades will then require a similar wait to unlock again, but this length of time is not terrible — it will give more of a chance to roll the Lucky Friends status, and for many, Remote Trading will be most useful for existing Lucky Friends in other countries who have been sat with that status in place for years. Another positive change includes a major increase in friend list size, from 450 to 650.

"Hot damn!" wrote Plus-Pomegranate8045 on Pokémon Go reddit TheSilphRoad. "Huge shout out to whoever it was at Niantic/Scopely that got this pushed through."

"Finally, I can trade with the guy ive been lucky friends with for 4 years," added another fan, Abject-Sector-2167. "He lives on the other side of the globe."

Of course, not everyone is happy. "Welp, that's just ruined the point of regionals," wrote HappyTimeHollis. "This sucks."

Months of datamines have suggested that Remote Trading has been in the works for some time, and initially fans had expected more of a system that required payment via in-game currency to use the feature. Its arrival now, as simply another part of free gameplay, has been greeted warmly. Though, of course, there remains the possibility that some new mechanic might be introduced in future to speed the process up.

For now, though, the announcement of Remote Trading is being received positively. Levelling up to Forever Friends is now live for the game's loyal audience in New Zealand, where new features are regularly tested first, before it is rolled out more widely.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social