As sophomore Ryan William’s friend drives through town, Williams sits in the passenger seat with both his phone and the driver’s in his hands. While moving through the streets, he throws Pokeballs at Pokemon as they pop up in the road, hoping to catch enough to level up. For many Pokemon Go fans, this is how the last few weeks of summer vacation were spent.

On Wednesday, July 6, Niantic, a software company based in California, released the greatly anticipated mobile app Pokemon Go. When first released, the game was a sensation among all age groups. Fans around the world were obsessed with the new app, and for many, the game brought back fond memories of the original Pokemon games. However, now that the excitement of the game has worn off, many players have retired their Pokemon and deleted the app.

Among these players that have given up Pokemon-hunting is junior Caroline Gambill.

“I think now that the craze is over people are kind of realizing that it’s not that cool,” Gambill said. “It’s kind of a waste of time in my opinion, and I think that other people see that and think the same.”

Senior Joey Pentola still enjoys playing the game on occasion, but understands why some players would want to give it up completely.

“I think people were really excited in the beginning just because it was a new Pokemon game,” Pentola said. “Once they actually realized its flaws and how it wasn’t what they expected, it started dying out.”

Pentola contends that these many flaws have contributed to its rapid decline in popularity.

“It used to glitch out a lot. It got a little better, but you’d have to relog in every five minutes,” Pentola said. “[Also], the tracking system for hatching eggs was terrible.”

Junior Devin Mendenhall was also deterred by Niantic game developer’s lack of effort to improve the game.

“[I stopped playing because] they were kind of slowing down on updates on the app store,” Mendenhall said. “They just didn’t really add what anyone wanted for a while.”

However, these fans that have strayed may have incentive to return to the game with the new Pokemon Go Plus. Along with this addition, a Buddy System was recently implemented for the mobile app. This system allows players to choose a Pokemon to be their buddy in the game.

Mendenhall thinks that new additions such as Pokemon Go Plus will once again boost the game’s user count.

“Once they start adding things that the people want, it will eventually become more popular,” Mendenhall said.

The release of Pokemon Go Plus could potentially draw some players back to the game. For many players, however, it may be too late to re-engage. This is because many players have deleted their accounts, forgotten their username or passwords or simply don’t have time to play anymore.

“My phone updated the app, and I got locked out of my account,” said Gambill. “Since then, I realized I don’t need to be playing it that often, so I stopped.”

Like Gambill and many other players, Williams realized early on that the game was losing momentum and decided to quit.

“The buzz died and no one wanted to play anymore,” said Williams. “It had its five seconds of fame.”