It would be interesting if Niantic decided to allow developers to do something similar in a “legal” way in the future though, perhaps with the release of some officially supported API functions. Of course, it would make sense for them to implement such an idea themselves in that case, as that would give them better control over how it’s used, plus it would allow them to monetize it.
The player numbers of “Pokemon GO” seem to have taken a bit of a dive shortly after the game came out, but in the end most players expected that. Mobile games tend to have a relatively poor retention rate in the first place, and the lack of content in “Pokemon GO” only added to that.
Updates are coming in the future, but hopefully the game will have enough momentum to stay relevant until they arrive. Otherwise, this would be the biggest waste of a good intellectual property that we’ve seen in a very long time, and many players would be severely disappointed.
Various features that were originally teased still haven’t been added to the game, and some players are seemingly starting to lose their trust in Niantic at this point. It’s particularly questionable why they are taking so long to add new content to the game when one considers their huge profits right now, but hopefully the studio will pick up the pace soon enough and will release some more interesting updates.