Pokemon GO

Niantic

One of my fondest memories in gaming history was the first two weeks after the launch of Pokémon GO, where you could literally walk down the street and find dozens of players all catching wild Pokémon in a phenomenon I have never seen before or since. But now, it’s the start of a new era.

Niantic, the publisher of Pokémon GO, has now sold the game to a new company, the Saudi-owned Scopely, divorcing itself from far and away its most successful product in its lifespan in addition to other parts of its gaming division. The price was $3.5 billion, also includes Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, and no doubt Niantic will be celebrating that new cash influx.

Scopely is the publisher of another GO-based game, Monopoly GO, which you may not have heard of, but you would be out of step with the general public if so, because the game is the fastest mobile title to hit $3 billion in revenue worldwide. It’s a monster.

Pokemon GO

Niantic

So, what’s changing with Pokémon GO? Because this was literally announced today, alongside no specific concrete changes to the game, we don’t know. But we do have information that could tell us what direction things may be heading.

The current development team working on Pokémon GO is moving over to Scopely as part of the sale, so it’s not like it’s a totally clean house and all new devs are being brought in that don’t know the game.

Additionally, Pokémon is still owned by…The Pokémon Company, notoriously protective over the IP and any significant changes to a flagship game like this would have to run through them, as Scopely will not have free reign to do whatever they want with the game.

But there are risks with being linked to Scopely now. Monopoly GO and other Scopely games like Marvel Strike Force have made so much money in part because of its breadth of monetization, and players are worried that may be increased when the game moves over to try with more attempts to extract money from fans. It’s not impossible Scopely just wants it to print money like it has been, but it almost seems more likely they’ll want to extract even more out of it. After all, they just paid a giant chunk of their GO revenue to buy it, after all.

Fans are understandably on edge with this development, as change is often bad, and a change like this? They’re going to want some reassurance that the GO and its monetization are not about to be dramatically overhauled.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.