Trading currently unavailable in Pokémon Go

Niantic has confirmed that trading is currently unavailable in Pokémon Go due to an unknown issue. 

The developers are investigating the outage following multiple reports from players in different regions that one of the game’s core mechanics was either failing mid-trade or entirely unavailable to select. 

Trainers, trading is currently unavailable as we investigate an issue. We apologize for the inconvenience, and will continue to update here. Thank you for your patience.

— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) January 20, 2022

Trades being down keeps players from accessing an important part of Pokémon Go, and that is highlighted even further because it is happening during the first day of the new Power Plant event. And it appears the only reason Niantic was looking into the problem is because players were experiencing a glitch that gave increased chances at getting Lucky Pokémon when trading. 

Lucky Pokémon are special Pokémon that have a set number of good IVs and cost half as much Stardust to power up. There is a five percent chance that any Pokémon received during a trade can become a Lucky Pokémon, which increases depending on how long that Pokémon has been in the Trainer’s box. Essentially, the older a Pokémon, the higher the chance it will become Lucky. 

Over the last several hours, players have documented an unusual number of Lucky Pokémon being received during trades, including several who traded up to 100 Pokémon with friends and had all of the received Pokémon become Lucky Pokémon. 

Today I traded 100 Pokémon with a friend and they ALL turned lucky. from TheSilphRoad

Whether that is the only cause is unknown, but Niantic has since removed the ability to trade for all players while the support team looks into potential issues within the system.

Fans have rightfully pointed out that Niantic is quick to patch out bugs and glitches like this when they are positive for players, meanwhile harmful content like broken encounter odds can sometimes go unchecked for days. 

It is likely that Niantic will compensate players for this unscheduled maintenance on a core feature of the game, but until then, players will just have to wait until trading goes back up in Pokémon Go. 

Update Jan. 20 9:10pm CT: Niantic has resolved the issue affecting trades and made the feature live again. As compensation for the unplanned downtime, Pokémon Go players can trade up to 150 Pokémon per day through Jan. 24 at 12pm CT.