I remember it clearly, I was lying on the floor of my best friends house staring at the off-white plaster ceiling of their century old home. My body sunk into the plush carpeted floor as my mind drew to a blank as to how to spend my night. A friend lit up a cigarette and climbed out the window onto the roof, observing the night. Everything at that moment was calm, within minuets it would all change. My phone buzzed, it took a second for the vibration to rouse me from my mental fog. I turned my head lifted my phone and within seconds total joy eclipsed over my face. Pokemon Go had been released in the U.S.

For those still unaware, Pokemon Go is a virtual reality game by Niantic Labs and Nintendo. The game merges our world with that of the Pokemon, placing them in our day to day lives via augmented reality, and allowing us to catch them and train them top battle in gyms across the world. Pokemon go, can in many ways, also be attributed as the childhood fantasy of many millennials come true. It has taken us by the heart and launched us into a world of exploration and adventure. However, like an emotionally abusive boyfriend, or girlfriend, Pokemon Go has not only ignited our hearts, but repeatedly and violently beat our hopes and dreams to submission breaking us into mindless zombies who continue to play the game despite the pain Niantic thrusts upon us via game updates.

Pokemon Go's journey to it's now malefic self began with only modest problems. As many early adopters can remember, the first week of the game was plagued with server overloads, and app crashes. This was easy to forgive considering that the game reached #1 on apples App Store and #7 for highest grossing after less that 24 hours of existence. This understanding would grow short as more problems began to surface. Within a week it was uncovered that the game was stealing users data. Many of us fans simply brushed this off as a mere security hiccup along the Pokemon filled road of happiness. However, like many parasitic relationships, we were oblivious to the emotional destruction that would come. This began with the breaking of the tracking system.

The in-game tracking system consisted of three paw prints under the names of pokemon in the nearby menu. These paw prints would disappear as you got closer to a specific pokemon. Once they were gone you knew the Pokemon would soon appear. This basic system is what made the game largely playable, as it prevented you from wandering in circles for hours in hopes of finding that Charizard that is taunting you on the nearby screen. Rather than spend the next three weeks attempting to fix this, you opted to not only fully disable the in game tracker, but send a cease and desist to the creators of Pokevision, a website that gave some direction to a now directionless game. As if this were not enough, you also decided it fair to make it increasingly more difficult to capture Pokemon, now using up to four poke-balls to capture something as menial as a Pidgey.

All of this can draw to one question. Why, Niantic would you do this to us. The answer to this is simple, yet none the less painful. Niantic is a business, and among other things their end goal is to make profit. Pokemon go, being freeware, must bring in some form of profit, one version of this being through in app purchases. Thus it only makes sense for them to increase the difficulty of catching Pokemon as the more poke balls used, the more likely individuals are to buy more through the store. The same exists with the likes of lucky eggs and incense where items crucial for staying competitive require physical money to utilize. While it is understandable that there is a direct need to make money, it would be nice if other methods were used, such as advertising through pokestops, and expansion upon the new platform Niantic has developed.

To close, I'd like to reiterate that Pokemon Go is a wonderful game which has brought many together. It has created a means to unite people of all generations, races, and cultures creating new bonds across the board. While many of the updates have created massive flaws, one can only hope that Niantic will heed the advice of all the players and stop the pain so many players experience.