Monster Hunter Now unlocks the train, and still will not count it as walking

Games that read your location have all had the same blunt safety rule for a decade: past a certain speed, they stop working. Monster Hunter Now's V127, released on 24 August 2026, is the first time one of them has offered to make an exception, and it has picked a very specific one.

If the game decides you are on a train, it now asks. Answer that you are not the driver, and the restrictions come off.

The reason the lock existed, in the developer's own words

The announcement is unusually direct about why the restriction was there in the first place, and the sentence is worth reading slowly because it describes every location-based game on your phone, not just this one.

That is the whole problem stated in one line. A phone knows how fast it is moving. It does not know which seat you are in. The speed lock is what you get when a developer has to choose a single behaviour for the driver and the passenger, and picks the one that cannot get somebody killed.

V127 does not solve that problem. It narrows it: for one mode of transport where the game believes it can recognise the route, it asks the question out loud instead of assuming the worst.

What the confirmation actually unlocks

The help centre article the announcement links to is the precise version. Before the update, it says, "certain gameplay features such as hunting and gathering were restricted while traveling at high speed (e.g., on a train)". After it, a confirmation screen appears during high-speed travel — "but only when traveling by train" — and once you confirm you are not the driver, "the restrictions on gameplay such as hunting and gathering will be lifted".

The button is labelled "I am not a driver" in the help centre and the release notes; the news post writes it as "I'm not the driver". The instruction attached to it is the same in both places, and it is not decorative.

The half that did not change: distance

This is the part that decides whether the update is useful to you, and it is one sentence buried under a subheading in the help centre.

The release notes say the same thing in their own words: distance travelled is not counted while moving at high speed, so features that rely on walking distance, Driftsmelting among them, do not advance. Confirming that you are a passenger buys you the ability to play. It does not buy you progress on anything the game measures in steps.

So the honest description of the feature is that a commute is now play time rather than dead time, and it is still not a shortcut. If the reason you wanted this was to farm the distance meter on a forty-minute rail journey, the update was not built for you and says so.

Trains only, and only when the phone is sure

The scope is stated three times across the two documents, which suggests the developer expected to be asked. The news post: "This update applies only to passengers traveling by train. Gameplay restrictions while traveling at high speeds by other means will remain unchanged." The release notes repeat it for high-speed movement detected "along routes other than train lines". Buses, cars, coaches and anything else are where they were.

It can also simply not happen. Both documents describe the same failure mode, and it is the ordinary one for anything built on a phone's location fix.

• If your location or network connection is unstable, or the app cannot confirm you are travelling by train, the confirmation screen may not appear and the standard high-speed restrictions apply instead.
• The news post adds that the feature "may not be available if your device is unable to accurately determine your location".
• Even after you have answered it, "the confirmation dialog may appear again" — so this is a prompt you re-answer, not a setting you turn on.

None of the three documents says what speed triggers the check, or how the game decides a route is a railway line. Neither does the App Store listing. Those are reasonable questions and there is currently no published answer to any of them, so this article does not offer one.

The thing worth taking to any location game

Monster Hunter Now is published by Scopely Explore, the studio formerly called Niantic, whose safety FAQ states the position that produced speed locks in the first place: "As with any mobile app, Niantic apps should not be operated while driving a vehicle. This is reinforced by warnings and behaviors within the app and it's vital that people be responsible and not play while driving." The speed lock is one of those behaviours, and it is not going anywhere.

What this update makes legible, though, is a distinction that is worth carrying into every game of this kind, and one that most of them never state on a single screen:

1. 1

   Ask what the game does at speed, not just whether it works

   "Can I play on the train" and "does the train count" are two different questions with two different answers, and this update answers them differently on purpose.

2. 2

   Find out how distance is measured before you plan around it

   A game that rewards walking is measuring something narrower than movement. Anything that moves you without your legs is likely to be excluded, whatever else the game lets you do while it happens.

3. 3

   Expect the prompt to be a prompt

   A safety confirmation that reappears is doing its job. Treat a game that lets you switch the check off permanently as the unusual one.

For the version of this that applies to a game built almost entirely around distance, how to plan a Pokémon GO walk that is actually worth taking covers what a walking-distance meter does and does not reward. And if the reason you have not played on your commute is the battery rather than the lock, why mobile games drain your battery has the settings that matter — GPS with the screen on is close to the worst case a phone has.