To quote comrade Finger, they had a good thing going. Whales would dump money into remote raiding and that backbone supported dolphins and minnows who could both host and join raids via pokegenie, which was a completely independent third party organization that Niantic didn't have to manage or moderate. All Niantic had to do was continue their normally scheduled content treadmill and reap the benefits.

The whole 'but the whales are burning through content too fast, Niantic had to stop them' explanation doesn't hold water for me. Wouldn't Niantic rather have some portion of whales get burnt out and drop off the game for a while until the next content release rather than shut off that revenue stream entirely?

I dunno, to me the only explanation that makes sense is there's something about human movement tracking that Niantic really, really wants.