Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data

Niantic is selling Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now to Scopely, a company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund through Savvy Games. The article says the deal leaves unclear what will happen to current and future player location data, including data from Pokémon Go’s 100 million players.

Reading notes

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• Niantic is selling Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now to Scopely.
• Scopely is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Savvy Games, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
• The companies’ blog posts do not specifically explain what will happen to Pokémon Go location data.
• Campfire and Wayfarer are also part of the deal.
• Niantic will keep Ingress and Peridot.
• Niantic says it is spinning off its AI mapping business into Niantic Spatial.
• Scopely is a new investor in Niantic Spatial.
• Scopely told 404 Media that player data will be handled under privacy laws and stored on U.S.-based servers.
• Scopely said precise location data is kept for a limited time and used for game operations like cheating prevention and bug fixing.
• Scopely said players can opt in to scan public places for new AR experiences.
• The article says Pokémon Go and the other games need location data to work.
• The article says it is unclear what will happen to historic location data, future location data, and any possible data sharing between Scopely and Niantic.
• The article says this kind of location-data monetization is hard for users to track once data has been collected.