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How Niantic Labs Created a Mobile Gaming Behemoth
Pokémon Go is still incredibly popular — and making an absolute fortune
To miss the insane rush of Pokémon Go when it first hit the market in 2016, you would have likely been in a coma or somewhere off in the Himalayas with no internet connection.
The game took the world by storm, sending hordes of people into the streets, interrupting traffic and anything else in the way to catch Pokémon.
Cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles were completely overrun — with massive groups of people all moving in a pack and pecking away at their phones.
It was so popular that the game had over 230 million monthly users early on. But, by the end of the year, there wasn’t even 50 million people logging in every month.
While the game lost a lot of steam, it never went away. To close 2024, Pokémon Go had about 110 million monthly users. It gained about 20 million new monthly users for the whole year.
