Niantic is bought by Scopely
Niantic (Pokemon GO’s developers) have been bought by Scopely (Monopoly GO’s developers) for 3.6 Billion USD.
This is a significant purchase, since Pokemon GO is Niantic’s pride and joy, it’s single-handedly THE reason Niantic is known. Pokemon GO has consistently been ranking highly in the top mobile games since it came out in 2016, making up for millions of players weekly that make up a majority of Niantic’s playerbase.
However, in the past couple of years Pokemon GO has been seeing bad reception from their players. This is due to bad decisions by the developers, such as removing accessibility related quality of life features that they introduced with the pandemic like the “Remote Raid Passes” (which are now paid for). An important detail to note out is, despite the pandemic being 5 years ago, limiting everyone from being able to leave the comfort of their houses, Pokemon GO’s developers made massive changes to accommodate for these extreme cases. Because of this, the number of active players spiked because the game was having good reception, consistent quality of life updates, and a reason to delve into the digital version of our own world. As previously mentioned, the “Remote Raid Passes” allowed for players, regardless of where they were, to remotely access the promoted raids with other players (also regardless of where they were), in order to take down these tough Pokemon battles.
These changes were beloved by the community, however as the limitations of the pandemic lessened world-wide, the developers sneakily started making these quality of life updates a paid twist. Pokemon GO, since 2022, has become more of a Pay-to-Win game, making events that give exclusive mythical Pokemon (that are unobtainable otherwise) a paid activity, which is time gated to a couple days rather than allowing for players to be able to it at their own time like most other events they give special Pokemon in.
Because of this approach that Niantic decided to approach, the player reception hasn’t been quite good, making players reluctant to wanting to spend their hard earned money on Pokemon GO’s money grubbing strategy. This makes Scopely’s acquisition of Niantic, as well as all the developers that are confirmed to be moving from Pokemon GO Niantic->Pokemon GO Scopely, a bit more of a sticky situation. Monopoly GO is an AFK game that’s pretty much a glorified casino. You can’t finish events without spending money on getting extra rolls. Because of this, Scopely’s approach in attempting to getting players to spend in microtransactions all the scarier when it comes to Pokemon GO (a game, which is remind you has a target audience of children).
Many have shared their concerns on social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) as well as on Reddit. Players are naturally scared that Pokemon GO will become even more of a Pay-to-Win game as well as Scopely interfering too much with the core structure of Pokemon GO, basically killing off the game in an attempt to get as much out of the players as possible.
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