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When it launched in 2016, Pokémon Go completely changed the way people played games. It was the first time a mobile game not only hooked people to screens but also brought them outside—into the streets, parks, and even historical sites—in search of Pokémon.
Earlier this month, nine years later, the game made headlines again. According to reports, the game’s developer, Niantic, is selling its gaming division to Scopely for $3.5 billion. Scopely, originally an American company, was acquired in 2023 by a corporation owned by PIF—the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Saudi government is effectively acquiring Pokémon Go.
This is one of the largest acquisitions ever made in the gaming industry. The deal includes ownership of Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom, along with the rights to use and sell Niantic’s augmented reality (AR) technology. It also includes Niantic’s Campfire and Wayfarer apps.
Saudi Arabia’s involvement in gaming is not new. It is one of the key sectors the kingdom has targeted as part of Vision 2030, a strategic plan aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. In addition to investing in gaming—an area to which Saudi Arabia has allocated no less than $38 billion—the plan includes massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, as well as an ambitious goal to turn Saudi Arabia into a global tourism hub.
For example, Saudi Arabia has become the largest external shareholder in Nintendo, having acquired approximately 8.3% of the Japanese company’s shares. It has also invested about $3.6 billion in the American gaming giant Activision Blizzard and nearly $1 billion for an 8% stake in the Swedish gaming powerhouse Embracer Group.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s growing dominance in the gaming industry, the Pokémon Go deal is different—and raises serious concerns. To understand why, we need to revisit the game’s groundbreaking early days. Pokémon Go was the first game to integrate AR technology with GPS tracking, allowing players to locate, catch, train, and battle virtual Pokémon in real-world locations.
The game was a landmark achievement that blurred the line between the physical and digital worlds. It became an overnight global sensation, racking up around half a billion downloads in just six months. Since its launch, Pokémon Go has reportedly generated more than $8 billion through in-game purchases, such as virtual items.
While the initial hype has faded over time, Pokémon Go still boasts a significant and stable player base. At its peak in 2016, the game had 232 million monthly active players. According to estimates, it still retains tens of millions of active players each month.
Despite its success, Pokémon Go has raised privacy concerns since its launch due to its extensive use of location data and personal information. The game constantly tracks users’ locations, allowing Niantic to determine where players live, work, travel, and socialize. Beyond that, Niantic can infer users’ sleep, work, and leisure habits, as well as their social interactions within the game.
Additionally, Pokémon Go requests extensive device permissions, including access to the camera, microphone, storage, and even file scanning—allowing it to scan all of a user’s files.
But that’s just the beginning. In late 2024, Niantic announced that it was using Pokémon Go to build an artificial intelligence model trained on more than 30 billion images collected from its apps, primarily Pokémon Go. This model, called the Large Geospatial Model (LGM), is an AI-based system designed to improve computers’ understanding of the physical world.
LGM aims to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, enabling smart devices—such as AR glasses, robots, and navigation systems—to better interpret and interact with their surroundings. Imagine Google Maps, but instead of 2D maps, it creates a dynamic 3D replica of the real world, capturing the locations of buildings, pathways, object heights, and even changes over time.
Every image or video uploaded to the system helps it improve. Pokémon Go players provide real-time imagery from a pedestrian’s perspective—data that cannot be collected by drones or vehicle-mounted cameras like those used in Google Street View. In effect, the game serves as a massive global data-gathering tool.
So what does Niantic do with all this data? In theory, it is used to enhance AR experiences, develop robotics, improve navigation, and assist in urban planning. But what about privacy? Pokémon Go continuously collects location data from players. According to Niantic, this data is “anonymized” to protect users’ privacy. However, the company does not disclose detailed information about its anonymization techniques, making it difficult to assess their effectiveness. Moreover, anonymized data can sometimes be re-identified when combined with other datasets.
Pokémon Go is far more than just a game—it is a powerful global data-harvesting engine. Niantic has transformed its vast database of user movements and real-world imagery into a valuable technological and economic asset. Now, all that data is about to fall into the hands of Saudi Arabia—a country not exactly known for championing civil rights.
While Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of Pokémon Go raises concerns about privacy and technological control, it also fits into a broader trend of foreign governments gaining ownership of sensitive digital platforms. A key parallel is China’s TikTok, which has sparked similar concerns in the West. Both China and Saudi Arabia recognize the immense strategic value of digital and geospatial data—not just as a technological asset, but as a potential tool for global influence. Just as TikTok has been viewed as a security risk due to the Chinese government’s control over user data, the Pokémon Go acquisition could grant Saudi Arabia access to an extensive database of global user movements and digital behaviors.
