Original title: Pokémon UNITE Announces Shutdown: Even the World's No.1 IP Can't Make MOBA Work?

Author: Yi Sa

Source: Youxi Putao

Hero image source: pexels

On the afternoon of October 27, Pokémon officially announced that Pokémon UNITE is expected to shut down in March 2027. Since its launch on Nintendo Switch in July 2021...

The Chinese mainland version, Pokémon UNITE (Guofu), followed with its own shutdown announcement, saying service will end in January 2027. The game was co-developed by The Pokémon Company and TiMi Studio Group, and its launch date...

At launch, Pokémon UNITE actually enjoyed solid buzz — downloads exceeded 15 million within two days and cumulative downloads across platforms surpassed 50 million within four months, and it even won a Google...

But on revenue, Pokémon UNITE was hardly a blockbuster. Per AppMagic estimates, the game's October 2021 revenue was around US$9.4 million (about RMB 62...

Compared with another Pokémon IP mobile game, the difference is stark: Pokémon GO earned more than US$200 million (about RMB 1.3 billion) in its first month, setting a new mobile game revenue record at the time; in 2020...

Of course, the two games' gameplay, monetization designs and market environments are vastly different, making direct comparison difficult. But at least by the commercial scale of Pokémon, the world's No.1 IP, Pokémon UNITE didn't meet common expectations...

So in 2024, the publisher already announced server closures in Belgium and the Netherlands, and later removed Turkish, Russian and Hindi support in 2025. This year, the game also exited the 2027 Pokémon World...

Those who have played it may know that Pokémon UNITE's initial innovations were quite aggressive: the game set out to be a MOBA while having to fit the many conventions of Pokémon battles in the IP...

Earliest published game map footage

Since the Chinese mainland version only launched in 2024, TiMi had the chance to refine gameplay on the foundation of three years of international-server operations and make adaptations suited to the Chinese market.

The most obvious changes include adjusting victory conditions, wild-monster respawn mechanics and other designs, and adding enhancement systems like "Aeos Tech." The mainland version also added a large social hub, "Aeos Island," and multiple themed-park gameplay modes, attempting to...

This is also why people later came to view Pokémon UNITE more as a differentiated casual competitive MOBA.

Game ratings on TapTap / Haoyou Kuaibao

After launch, Pokémon UNITE briefly reached No.11 on the iOS top-grossing games chart, but its trajectory afterward was not optimistic, and by 2025 it had essentially fallen off the chart.

Even Pokémon, the world's No.1, couldn't perfect the long run — which only shows that in the game industry, success is really hard.