Pokémon TCG Pocket Has Lost 41% of Its Players in a Year

DeNA's latest quarterly financials reveal that Pokémon TCG Pocket averaged around 23 million monthly active users between April and June 2026 — down from roughly 39 million during the same period last year, a drop of about 41%. The revenue hit is just as stark: DeNA's games division pulled in $76.88 million for the quarter, down 33% from $114.98 million a year earlier, and profit from that division collapsed 62% from $64.16 million to $24.14 million. DeNA explicitly named Pokémon TCG Pocket as the main driver of that year-over-year decline.

The two most repeated complaints from players are poor pull rates and a frustrating trading system. In the physical Pokémon TCG, roughly one in four packs contains an ultra-rare or better card — in Pocket, players routinely open ten packs without seeing a single full-art or basic ex. Trading, introduced in January 2025, was overhauled after backlash — Trade Tokens were scrapped — but restrictions remain: you can only trade with friends, and certain cards are off-limits entirely. The game's most recent expansion, Ruler of the Skies, dropped in late July and is headlined by Mega Rayquaza ex, alongside Mega Gallade ex and Mega Metagross ex, but a new card set alone hasn't reversed the trend. DeNA says it plans to address retention through events, promotions, and feature improvements, though it hasn't detailed exactly what those will look like.

Pokémon TCG Pocket launched in late 2024 riding enormous momentum — Pokémon is the largest entertainment IP in the world, and the physical card game was simultaneously experiencing a surge in mainstream interest. The mobile game's core hook, digitally ripping open booster packs and collecting animated Immersive Cards that spring to life, was immediately compelling. But the game launched with well-documented shortcomings that critics flagged from day one, and two years in, many of those issues remain unresolved. The pull rate problem is arguably worse now than at launch, with players reporting collecting 40 or more duplicates of common cards while never seeing the rarer animated cards they actually want.

Despite the losses, 23 million monthly active users is still a massive audience, and DeNA's challenge now is stopping the bleed rather than rebuilding from scratch. Community reaction to the financial news has been blunt — replies to the story on X largely consist of players repeating the same demand: better pull rates. Whether DeNA's planned events and promotions are enough to address that core frustration remains to be seen, with the game approaching its second anniversary in a few months.