🎮 Gaming: POKÉMON GOes to Riyadh

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💵 First Ronaldo, now Pikachu

Remember back in the summer of 2016 when it seemed like everyone was running around town furiously swiping at their screens in the hopes of capturing a virtual character? Pokémon Go was, and till today still remains, the only example of augmented reality gaming that people actually played and enjoyed en masse. Even Niantic, which runs other AR games, has been unable to replicate that success, underscoring the deep rooted popularity of the Pokémon franchise.

Scopely, the U.S.-based second-largest mobile game developer in the world, which itself is owned by Saudi-based Savvy Games Group, which itself is owned by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund the Public Investment Fund (phew) announced this week that it was acquiring Niantic for a cool $3.5B, the value of which is arguably tied entirely to its Pokémon Go property.

The gaming news media had many things to say about this development around a beloved game. In this issue, we look at how the story was reported in IGN (the world’s largest, most mainstream gaming news media) and Kotaku (a highly influential, highly opinionated gaming news media).

🕹️ IGN: Pokémon Go Dev Moves to Reassure Players After $3.5 Billion Sale to Monopoly Go! Company Is Confirmed [link]

📢 What IGN is saying
With over 60% of the article reprinting a blog post by the Pokémon Go chief Ed Wu, the article spends the remaining 40% reprinting the press statement from the companies, but not much else.

1. 📸 Visuals

There is one visual for the article, and it occurs roughly a third of the way through, when the article switches from reporting on Scopely’s press statement to reporting on Ed Wu’s blog post. The image itself is pulled from Scopely’s press statement, and is a visualisation of all the properties that Scopely is buying from Niantic.

The visual has a blue background with the Scopely logo at the top. Below the logo are five images of the Niantic franchises, with their names and logos below the images. From the left, they are Niantic Campfire, Niantic Wayfarer, Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now. There is a sixth image, which shows the Niantic employees, the only one that has real humans in it.

2. ✍🏽 Words

The headline first mentions Ed Wu’s blog post (‘Pokémon Go Dev Moves to Reassure Players’) before mentioning the sale of Niantic to Scopely and the amount of the sale. Even the subtitle is a direct quote from Wu’s blog post. The article then begins with a quick summary of the deal, describing Scopely as the ‘Saudi-owned maker of Monopoly Go!’. The article mentions some finer details of the deal, before it goes into the press statement from Scopely. Through this statement, we learn that Niantic ‘has over 30 million monthly active users (MAUs), over 20 million weekly active users, and saw more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024.’ The article points out that Pokémon Go has not only been a ‘top 10 mobile game every year since it’s launch nearly a decade ago’, it also had ‘over 100 million unique players’ as recently as 2024.

Following this, there are some further statements from Niantic, after which the article reprints Wu’s blog post. The article does mention that the players of Pokémon Go had previously ‘expressed concern’ about how the game would develop once the sale had gone through. Much of the blog post republished in the article references these concerns and looks to the future, with the game evolving into one that could be played indefinitely without it becoming obsolete or dated.

Towards the end of the article, there is mention of Niantic’s geospatial AI business being spun off from Niantic into its own company, which will be invested in by both Niantic and Scopely, and will operate separately from Scopely, including the games that fall under Niantic Spatial Inc.

❓ What it means
The question here is whether we learnt anything different from having read the press statements and blog posts from the companies themselves. In a word, no. First of all, the article positions the story more from Ed Wu’s blog post perspective rather than the actual sale of Niantic and what it means. Even the headline plays into this aggressively, keeping the story of the sale for later.

The success of Pokémon Go is highlighted with mentions of the number of players the game still manages to pull annually. But even with such a focus on the fate of the playability of Pokémon Go, the article doesn’t offer any insight or perspective on what this deal could mean for that. I personally am left with more questions than answers.

⚠️ Why it matters
Why is this even news? One company is buying another company. So what? Here’s where I try to offer a few reasons.

First, a quick online search of which games were the most played games of 2024 will throw up some familiar names: Minecraft, Fortnite, League of Legends, Roblox, and even older games like Counter-Strike 2. None of these games were released last year, or even the year before. These games, by all accounts, are old games, that are built on a strong community multi-player platform.

What does this mean? It means that if you are a video game company in 2025, you are more likely to have success with a 10-year-old game than with anything new you release this year. Niantic knows this, considering that it has not been able to replicate the success of Pokémon Go with any other franchise it owns, even though the game is nigh on a decade old.

The caveat here is that the games I mentioned are mostly, if not all, PC games, and not console games that one would play on their Nintendo Switches, PlayStations, and XBoxes. And while there is much popularity and money to be made by game makers on console, PC gaming has a wider global reach and greater longevity.

Second, Niantic has somewhere between 900-1,000 employees. Since 2022, every major video game company has been laying off hundreds, if not thousands of employees with the reliable regularity of a Japanese train. What does this acquisition mean for the employees behind one of the biggest mobile games of the last decade?

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👾 KOTAKU: Pokémon Go Sold To Saudi Government [link]

📢 What Kotaku is saying
Kotaku’s coverage is much more focused on the Saudi angle of the acquisition, something that IGN did not tackle. Still, the idea here is similar - Pokémon Go is the crown jewel in Niantic’s crown, which now sits on Scopely’s head.

1. 📸 Visuals

There is also only one visual for this article, and it sits at the top of the page. In it, we see four Pikachus expressing a range of happy emotions with different coloured crowns on their heads. Only the Pikachu on the left is in the air, while the other three remain firmly on the ground. The ground in question is a green field filled with flowers, which stretch on far behind the Pikachus, including some trees in the far back.

2. ✍🏽 Words

The headline immediately introduces the Saudi angle to the story, saying that now Pokémon Go is owned by the Saudi government. The article begins in earnest outlining the deal, but without as much detail as IGN. Instead, the article mentions the importance of Pokémon Go (‘one of the defining games of the last decade’) and also mentions that this sale comes after Niantic was unsuccessful at replicating any more hits in the vein of Pokémon Go (‘the tech company [Niantic] failed to create any more hits’).

The article continues with a few comments from the Niantic CEO, including his mention of how this investment will help make Niantic’s games “forever games”, before expanding a bit more on the stable of games that sit within Niantic and Scopely beyond Pokémon Go. The article mentions that Scopely’s game catalogue includes ‘Stumble Guys, Star Trek Fleet Command, and Monopoly Go!’, which is arguably their most recognisable game.

Interestingly, the article includes the detail of Scopely themselves being acquired by Savvy Games group from Saudi Arabia back in 2023 for $4.9B, before explaining that the deal is the latest achievement of Saudi Arabia’s ‘big investments […] into the gaming world, including buying small stakes in Nintendo and Electronic Arts.’ The article then mentions that these moves have been accused by critics as attempts by Saudi Arabia to soften their global image, which includes ‘sports washing’, to further distract attention from the country’s ‘abysmal’ human rights record, and killing of ‘Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018’.

Towards the end of the article, the focus is brought back to Pokémon Go and Niantic, with the article highlighting how the game brought people ‘you never would have expected to know the difference between a Blastoise and a Greninja’ into the Pokémon realm, indicating it’s wide mass appeal. The article also mentions how Niantic failed to recreate the games success with other franchises, including it’s ill fated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game, which was ‘shutdown within three years of launching.’ The article wraps up by mentioning that should this deal go through, it will be the ‘biggest gaming acquisition in the industry since Savvy bought Scopely.’

❓ What it means
Kotaku’s headline is visceral — it sounds like Saudi Arabia personally bought the Pokémon Go game. But even if Pikachu isn’t quite moving into the royal palace, the angle of the article is significant, which is brought into sharper focus with the last line of the article. Saudi Arabia’s previous major gaming acquisition, through it’s Savvy Games Group investment vehicle, was that of Scopely, and now through Scopely it’s acquiring Niantic. Does this mean we will see Niantic acquire something else in a few years time?

Ultimately, this is the latest in a long line of moves that Saudi Arabia has tied into it’s Vision 2030 goal to diversify it’s economy away from oil, bankrolled by PIF, it’s sovereign wealth fund. And this matryoshka doll of acquisitions only looks to be growing deeper.

⚠️ Why it matters
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of Saudi Arabia’s latest moves in the gaming industry:

1. Acquired Niantic for $3.5B

2. Acquired Scopely for $4.9B

3. Acquired between 5% - 10% of stake in Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive (parent of Rockstar games, maker of GTA and Red Dead Redemption

4. Hosted the very first Esports World Cup in Riyadh

5. Will host the first Olympic Esports Games in Riyadh in 2027

WHAT’S GOING ON? 

🍼 n00B or 💯 GGWP?

Niantic’s sale would’ve been news irrespective, but the fact that it is Saudi-backed businesses who are buying it adds a layer of intrigue and interest that’s hard to ignore. Last week’s Signpost covered the launch of a new boxing league financed and owned by the Saudis. This week it’s Niantic. Next week?

But the question here is whether this benefits anybody else apart from the Saudi government (who get a shiny new globally recognised and loved asset that they can either spin for money or use to build their global brand), and the people whose assets the Saudis are buying.

Saudi Arabia has been adamant that their investments are to position the kingdom as not just a gaming hub, but the gaming hub of the world. Which, if it was easy to do, every country would be doing. But outside of the U.S. and Japan, only Chinese studios (despite NetEase recently cutting jobs), and random European independent studios and Southeast Asian mobile gaming studios have gained any significant, sustainable traction.

So then, what about the gamers, who actually play the game? Will the Saudi’s aggressively monetise the game, ensuring every interaction sits behind a paywall? Or will they make everything freely available, absorbing all costs, so that all of us forget just how much money, time, and effort it takes to build a game these days?

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.
Read widely. Question thoroughly. Decide accordingly.

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Was this forwarded to you? Signpost is a free weekly newsletter analysing what the media says, what it means, and why it matters. It’s free to subscribe. Alternatively, you can add me on LinkedIn.