Today fans cheer for their favorite Pokémon GO players at the World Championships. But just a few years ago, the community might have nearly died out.
Upon its release in 2016, Pokémon GO was almost unavoidable. The game was omnipresent – everyone played it or had at least heard of it. Just shortly after its launch, the augmented reality game broke numerous records: it achieved the highest revenue, most downloads, and was the most played.
Today, you rarely see Pokémon collectors on the street. But does that mean Pokémon GO is dead?
Here you get a glimpse into the Pokémon World Championships 2024:
“As a result, a large part of the community died out”
A few weeks ago, the “Pokémon World Championships 2024” took place in Honolulu, Hawaii. Here, the best Pokémon trainers in the world fought for victory and prizes worth over €1,800,000.
Pokémon GO was also part of it. That is not a given, as GO has only recently been part of the big Pokémon tournaments.
- In 2022, Pokémon GO was part of the World Championships for the first time.
- The World Championships first took place in 2004, long before the release of Pokémon GO in 2016.
Has Pokémon GO changed? Over the years, not only Pokémon GO itself but also the community has continuously changed. And it hasn’t always looked good for the game.
Illya Babycha, a Pokémon GO referee, has been involved from the start. He tells MeinMMO how he experienced the development:
The GO community has gone through a gigantic evolution. The game had a huge community that organized tournaments on its own. Then came Corona, and of course, in person, you couldn’t hold tournaments anymore. As a result, a large part of the community died out and stopped playing.
But ‘Play! Pokémon’ [organizer of the tournaments] has given it back the charm it had back then, and a very large part of the community is coming back, or new players are also finding joy in it. And the tournaments are getting bigger.
This season, we had tournaments with more than 256 players for the first time. And after just two and a half years, that’s already quite good.
What do the player numbers say? In fact, player numbers seem to be going up again since 2022, even though the hype from the release remains unsurpassed, as the numbers from activeplayer.io indicate; there are no official statistics.
- Pokémon GO reportedly had 232 million monthly players at its release.
- Currently, there are about 90 million.
- The lowest player count was 62 million in 2022.
Perhaps the inclusion of Pokémon GO in the official tournaments was indeed the salvation that the game needed. But who can actually participate in such tournaments?
“The community is always there for you”
Of course, as a beginner, you might not be able to participate directly in the World Championships. However, there are many smaller national tournaments that you can find on the Play! Pokémon page.
There, you gain plenty of experience and so-called “Championship Points”. With enough such points, you can earn trips to international championships or even an invitation to the World Championship.
Are there any tips? All beginners who would like to get a taste of tournament air are advised by Illya:
It is important to know above all: The community is always there for you. If you need any tips, there are incredibly many helpful resources. Among them are also players from the community who are very helpful.
One of the best resources to get the information needed to prepare is PVPoke.
There you find many simulations. It was created by a community player. It is completely free, a website that simply offers a lot of information about movesets, Pokémon stats, match-ups… you can prepare very well there.
How Illya became the official Pokémon GO referee, and what tasks he had at the World Championships, you can find out in the interview here with us on MeinMMO: Are there really Pokémon professors, do you have to study for that?
MeinMMO was present at the Pokémon World Championships 2024 as a press representative. The costs for admission, travel, and accommodation were covered by the organizers.
