Creators of "Pokemon Uranium" have officially ceased supporting the game.
This came after they announced, via their official Twitter account that they will only be taking down the game. On Aug. 13, 2016, after one and half million downloads and multiple Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice letters from Nintendo, the developers of "Pokemon Uranium" took down the download links from its official website to respect the wishes of Nintendo.
Despite this, Kotaku reported that the developers said that the game is alive more than ever. In fact, Pokemon fans were still able to play the game through private smuggling between users or by downloading through torrent sites.
Unlike the phenomenal "Pokemon Go" game, "Pokemon Uranium" is an unlicensed and fan-made Pokemon game which was in development for nine years. The game added 150 fan-made species alongside with a new region called Tandor Region. Similar to the official games released by Nintendo, "Uranium" contains both online trading and online battling.
The stark contrast of "Uranium" from the official games is its difficulty and being more tactical. Players can choose between the already existing Pokemons plus the additional fan-made species. It has been developed using RPG Maker, an off-the-shelf construction kit for making Japanese role-players that in most hands is usually pretty limited.
Surprisingly, the game is slicker than expected of a fan-made game. But there were also several fan-made Pokemons that were really designed off-the-brand. Overall, the game was highly praised by fans.
However, this announcement of cessation by the developers caught many fans by surprise. It was made at the time when the official "Pokemon Go" game has reportedly lost around 15 million users. Fortunately, "Pokemon Go" is still said to be earning as much as $2 million per day with sustained growth.
The first version of "Pokemon Uranium" was released on Aug. 6, 2016. The game's creator and programmer is simply known as "JV". He coded the online systems for the game from scratch, which allows players to battle and trade with each other. The game was only available in Windows and no versions were made for Android, iOS, and other mobile platforms.