Even though Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke did not mention Trading during his keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress, we now have confirmation that this feature will indeed come to “Pokémon GO” soon. In addition, Niantic’s goal of bringing cooperative gameplay to Trainers has been revealed to be the top priority at this point.

At the Game Developers Conference, Niantic senior product manager Tasuo Nomura spoke with Polygon about the Trading System of “Pokémon Go.” This feature, which is present in the main games, would enable players to send and receive Pokémon via a worldwide network, called the Global Trade System.

Since “Pokémon GO” was launched last year, many players were hoping for this feature to be part of the gameplay. Unfortunately, it was put on the backburner as Niantic invested more time and effort in fixing issues and improving the mechanics of playing the game as a solo player. The introduction of in-game seasonal events also made it seem impossible for the developer to really allot its full attention to the completion of the Trading System and its launch.

Nevertheless, it’s now clear that Niantic is indeed serious in bringing the Trading System to the mobile game. After all, Nomura already said that “[trading] won’t be through the internet.” What this means is “Pokémon GO” will likely have a Trading System that is unique to it only, not something that would require players to access the Global Trade System.

Speaking further of this upcoming feature, Nomura stated, “You shouldn’t be able to exchange your Pokémon with someone who is 100 miles away from you … The person needs to be in your proximity. ” He added, “We don’t want to just have that be an online game that you can just exchange virtually.”

Given Nomura’s statements, players should expect a Trading System that will be proximity-based and not something that would enable worldwide exchange among Trainers form different parts of the world. This just coincides with Niantic’s priority at the moment which is to get players to play the game together.

Although adding the Trading feature to “Pokémon GO” may sound easy, Nomura admitted that its a burden for them to introduce something that would make or break the game to hardcore fan. “We’re still trying to come up with an answer [to trading] that makes sense, so it doesn’t kill the game,” he said. “If we fail this, we can easily kill the game.”

Following Nomura’s revelations about Trading, The Silph Road’s dronpes assured their followers on Reddit that they are willing to help players who are serious with obtaining regional exclusives. Because the proximity-based Trading feature would require in-person interaction between players, dronpes stated that they are prepared to construct cross-continental trade routes to help traveling players get the regional creatures they are searching for.

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