Pokémon Duel Will Cease to Exist on the Play Store Starting October 31

While Pokémon Go may be the most popular game of the franchise (on mobile, i.e.), there are other lesser-known titles out there too. One of them happens to be Pokémon Duel, which was released back in 2017. The game saw some mild success since its release, with over 38 million downloads on the Play Store. It appears that the Pokémon company is pulling the plug on it, as indicated by a recent update to its Play Store listing.

Pokémon Duel game service will be terminated as of 10/31/2019 at 01:59 (UTC).
For details on the end of service, please see the in-game Information.
Thank you for your support. We realize that it’s not long until the end of service, but we hope you’ll continue to enjoy Pokémon Duel to the very end.

The statement doesn’t tell us much about why the game got the axe. The recent reviews on the Play Store, on the other hand, give us a much better idea. It appears that the game went overboard with its monetisation techniques and locked a lot of overpowered characters behind paywalls. Needless to say, this left F2P players fuming as they had no way to compete against their P2W opponents.

The reason for Pokémon Duel’s demise may be the departure of the ‘whales’ that sunk massive amounts of cash in it. It is unlikely that the Pokémon Company would cancel a revenue-generating title solely on the basis of negative player feedback.

This also serves as a daily reminder for people not to put too much money into a game. The devs can and will pull the plug on it if they feel that their game isn’t doing well enough and you’ll have nothing to show for it.

Another reason for the cancellation could be that Pokémon Masters is due for release soon. The last thing The Pokémon Company would want is for their own titles competing with each other. Let us all press F to pay respects to Pokémon Duel before it rides off into the sunset forever.