Niantic is fairly transparent when it comes to the updates it makes to Pokemon GO, but it keeps some things under wraps. For example, the company rarely reveals when it has made changes to the egg hatching pool, and so it's up to fans, like The Silph Road online community, to collect enough data to determine when new Pokemon are added and when others are removed. As it turns out, Niantic removed a total of nine Pokemon from the egg pool during the game's one year anniversary event, and added 13 more.

Around July 7th, Niantic removed some rather significant first generation Pokemon from Pokemon GO's egg hatching pool. All three starter Pokemon - Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle - can no longer be hatched from eggs, and neither can Ekans, Goldeen, Magnemite, Staryu, and Vulpix. One second generation Pokemon was also given the boot from the egg hatching pool, in the form of the bug/flying-type Pokemon Yanma.

All 13 Pokemon added to Pokemon GO's egg hatching pool happen to be second generation Pokemon. The three second generation starters - Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Totodile - can now be hatched from eggs, along with Chinchou, Hoppip, Houndour, Marill, Natu, Snubbull, Spinarak, Swinub, Teddiursa, and Wooper.

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Besides adding and removing Pokemon to the egg hatching pool, Niantic also tweaked the distance required to obtain some of the creatures. As some may recall, Chinchou was controversially a 10km egg, despite being a fairly common Pokemon out in the wild, and so it was moved to a 5km egg. Gligar, Mantine, and Pineco were all moved from 10km eggs to 5km eggs as well.

While fans are likely happy that Chinchou and some other relatively common Pokemon have been moved to smaller eggs, they may be upset that Niantic decided to remove some of the most popular first generation Pokemon from the egg hatching pool. After all, there may still be some Pokemon GO enthusiasts trying to obtain the evolved forms of all three first generation starters, which will be much more difficult now that they can't be hatched from eggs.

It's unclear why Niantic decided to remove Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle from the egg hatching pool, besides it wanting to make room for the second generation starters. Perhaps this is a sign that Niantic is looking to add third generation Pokemon soon, and so it wants the second generation starter Pokemon to be more readily available than they have been in the past. Of course, that's just speculation, so fans should keep their expectations in check when it comes to when third generation Pokemon will finally be added to Pokemon GO.

Pokemon GO is available now for iOS and Android mobile devices.

Source: The Silph Road