One of the latest Pokémon Go updates seems to have gotten rid of a bulk of Pokémon spawn points in the game. It seems that while some points were added, a lot of them were removed from players’ usual routes. Niantic has not made any announcements regarding spawn point changes.
Spawn points are known to change every now and then, but based on analysis from the Silph Road subreddit, it seems that more players are experiencing losses than they are gains. The subreddit is flooded with players reporting that their spawns have vanished, varying from players in quiet rural areas to players in bustling cities.
Several players, like Reddit user Seegtease, have theorized that spawn points haven’t been reduced as much as they’ve been spread out. Now instead of five Pokémon spawning in one point, those five Pokémon will spawn farther away from each other. It’s unknown if this is true or not yet.
User snowkittyxo notes that in Niantic’s other GPS-based game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite — which uses a lot of the same data from Pokémon Go to place monuments and objectives— the spawns for magical beings are way higher than Pokémon Go’s spawns. This means having higher numbers of spawns is something that Niantic can enable and disable at will.
All that being said, it’s a good time to walk around in your local areas to access the damage. It may be time to re-evaluate your go-to spots for Pokémon Go.