Earlier this year developers Niantic made some substantial changes to how you can play its enduring mobile hit Pokémon Go, making it far easier to continue playing, catching and levelling up monsters without leaving your home.

This happened for obvious reasons - with the pandemic starkly on the rise and people increasingly being locked down at home, roaming around playing Pokémon Go as normal was no longer something many people could do safely. 

Now, though, some of those changes are being rolled back to something closer to the old way of doing things, an interesting tactic from Niantic that's already attracting its fair share of questions. 

The principle changes are to only let your Pokémon collect Pokéstop benefits automatically if you're low on supplies, instead of as a matter of course, the amount of walking required to hatch eggs returning to normal, and incense once again only increasing its attraction to Pokémon when you're walking. 

These don't roll back every change Niantic initially made, but still represent a bit of a shift back to the expectation of outdoor activities, and that's causing concern for some, who would point out that with many countries around the world experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 and the US continuing to see huge numbers of cases, not enough has changed to warrant the rollback.

Either way, pending any changes in heart, the new system will be in place for Pokémon Go players from 1 October.