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When Pokémon Go launched, it exploded into a worldwide miracle in curt club. Massive downloads, huge amounts of user date, parties — for a brief period of fourth dimension, it looked as if the new game might unmarried-handedly revolutionize mobile gaming. The bloom, however, seems to fading off this particular rose in short gild.

A new study from Bloomberg highlights the steep decline in Pokémon Go'due south daily users and overall user engagement. While the app peaked at 45 million daily users, information technology's since declined to merely 35 1000000 — and while that all the same qualifies information technology equally a boom hit, information technology'due south a worrisome drop for a game to shed 22% of its user base in just one calendar month.

PokeGo

"Given the rapid ascent in usage of the Pokémon Go app since the launch in July, investors have been concerned that this new user feel has been detracting from fourth dimension spent on other mobile focused apps," senior Analyst Victor Anthony wrote for Axiom Capital Management. "The declining trends should assuage investor concerns about the bear upon of Pokémon Go on fourth dimension spent on the higher up named companies." (Said named companies included Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Twitter, and Snapchat.)

Pokémon Go a curt-lived fad?

I've kept an eye on Pokémon Go's evolution postal service-launch, even if I don't play information technology myself. Equally the outset augmented reality game to draw even half this much interest, information technology's been interesting to encounter how the title would proceed to attract users and grow the fan base of operations. Unfortunately, most of the news in the past 30 days has been negative.

Niantic broke the "Nearby" function that allowed users to gauge whether Pokémon were in their vicinity, and then removed it completely. It ordered all third-party services that provided Pokémon tracking to stop and desist from doing and so, damaging the power of many players to enjoy the game. The game has been criticized for turning into a relentless grind at higher difficulty levels, the battling mechanism is a pale shadow of what'due south available in other Pokémon games, and there are reports that the game flatly disallows yous from earning "likewise much" experience in a single day. At that place are also reports that Pokémon Go is a fundamentally different game if yous play in urban areas as opposed to rural ones — if yous don't alive in the right parts of the United states, there'south not a lot of Pokémon Get to enjoy in the first place.

It'due south entirely possible, even probable, that Pokémon Get will stabilize at a lower daily user rate. But Niantic's current focus seems to be on rolling the game out to more than locations, as opposed to improving the cadre feel and gameplay. That makes sense as far every bit continuing to push raw metrics like downloads and hours played, but it won't assist the company retain its player base in the long term.

If yous've been playing Pokémon Get, are you all the same picking it upwardly now or are you looking around for a new game? Permit us know in the comments.