Pokémon TCG Pocket has a big retention problem, developers reveal

I'm sort of a hater, so nobody listened to me when I said this myself in the past. But now it's coming from Pokémon TCG Pocket's own developer: the app is losing gamers' attention. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket is a successful mobile game, let's be real. It has broken all kinds of records for Pokémon, reaching over 150 million downloads, winning all kinds of rewards, and - most importantly - making tons of money. 

However, DeNA recently had to admit the hard truth: the game acquires new players easily, but is having issues with player retention.

Pokémon TCG Pocket sees monthly player count decline

In the game's Q3 earnings report, DeNA stated that existing users have started dropping off. While player acquisition has continued to be strong, it seems that players are not sticking around as long as they hoped. In fact, monthly active users have dropped. 

DeNA went on to say that the team recognizes the importance of initiatives aimed at increasing logins and remaining in the game, "such as enhancing the collection experience." 

While Pokémon TCG Pocket had some big updates over its short lifetime to improve battling, collecting, and sharing, the biggest focus has been on the game's expansions in an attempt to get players to spend more on opening packs. 

Even though DeNA didn't explain exactly what led to the decline or how many monthly users there are, many in the Pokémon scene believe that the game has just become too overwhelming. I said a while ago that there were way too many expansions and events. It's hard to keep up, even overwhelming. How can normal players who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars genuinely collect 'em all? 

Not to mention, a lot of the expansions have made the competitive aspect of the game unbalanced. The introduction of Mega Pokémon proved just that, allowing players pretty easy wins in the app's simplified version of the TCG. 

It's just a very chaotic experience, with new cards and limited-time items and booster packs being thrown at you constantly. You'd need so many Hourglasses and whatever other items there are now (I can't keep up) to deal with it all. 

I truly believe this is part of the problem. Rather than creating an incentive to keep grinding, it's left players feeling defeated.