Is Our Obsession With "Pokémon Go" Over? Stats Say, “Pretty Much”

Though no one thought Pokémon Go’s omnipresence would last forever, the suddenness of users abandoning ship is alarming, to say the least.

It feels like just the other day we were talking about people rushing into the streets to find Snorlaxes, instead happening upon dead bodies or winding up with fines (for playing while driving).

That’s because it literally was just the other day.

And yet, Pokémon Go may soon be just a faint memory, if new findings by expert stats website FiveThirtyEight is to be believed.

According to FiveThirtyEight (working off data from SurveyMonkey Intelligence), weekly active users in the United States have declined significantly since the game’s peak in July.

Even more perilously, daily downloads of the game in the States has fallen off a cliff since August 14.

What’s to blame on the massive fall of Pokémon Go? Was it the erasure of the function that allowed users to see how close they were to certain beasties? Is it because the accompanying, third-party apps that helped you locate rare Pokémon have since been banned?

Or, did the novelty just die?

It’s important to note that the game still seems pretty popular in Asia, but anyone who fell for the spell of Pokémon Go (*sheepishly raises hand*) needs no convincing that tedium sets in after a while.

As Guns ‘n Roses once opined, “nothing lasts forever and we both know hearts can change.”

At least we can rest easy with the knowledge that Pokémon, as a cultural phenomenon, never really dies. It just evolves.

Photo: iStock.