If you’ve been a Pokémon Go player at any point during the last decade, you’ll no doubt be familiar with The Silph Road. This community site bills itself as “the #1 spot for Pokémon Go discoveries and research” and has the history to back up that claim. Alas, it’s now becoming ancient history, as The Silph Road announced that it’s closing its doors after seven years of operation.
The reason appears to be financial, as Niantic pulled funds that have kept the site operational for the past year, although the move does come during yet another tense moment in the Pokemon Go community over Niantic’s handling of the game (our own POGO columnist is boycotting coverage of the game in May). “Niantic’s sponsorship of the Silph Road has concluded,” the group writes. “After considering the mounting financial constraints facing our team, along with the momentum and landscape of the game in 2023, our team has come to the bittersweet conclusion that it is time to close what has been an incredibly rewarding and memorable chapter of our lives.”
The team said while the subreddit will continue, the website is winding down with an ultimate closure date of August 1st.
To highlight how huge of a community project this was, organizers shared a few statistics: Since 2016, the website clocked 206.5M sessions, registered 1.67M event check-ins, and tracked 33,608 communities from 74 different countries.
“The Silph Road set the bar extraordinarily high for online game communities in so many ways,” the organizers said. “We hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we have. Now, it’s time to find our next adventure.”
