Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
The loss and subsequent banning of maps and map users made nearly everyone I know stop playing, especially in the total absence of an official replacement or a compelling reason to continue.<p>Hearing my map ding was enough cause to make me leap out of my chair and run to the nearby park at midnight to catch something I wanted, and there&#x27;d usually be the usual lure-users and a few map-users out there at the same time. Once I was out, I&#x27;d play for a while, hit a gym or two, maybe finish an egg, and go home. This was still really fun when it was disabled.<p>Without the map, there&#x27;s no reason for me to leave my house. There&#x27;s no group of people at work who stand up when a Blastoise is announced into our #pokemon channel, sending us all on a brief Pokemon&#x2F;coffee walk down the road.<p>That&#x27;s all on top of the poor quality of the game, which the maps and community had overcome.<p>Niantic being selfish and not understanding their own game or the culture around it seems to have squandered one of the greatest opportunities a company has ever had.<p>(I get that the maps were spamming them, but that&#x27;s a technical challenge. A bunch of well funded ex-googlers ought to be up to the challenge of scaling&#x2F;handling unexpected load for a chance like this.)