‘I have a sinking feeling’: The sale of Pokémon GO highlights weariness and distrust in the games industry
On Wednesday, March 12, 2025, Niantic announced it was selling its games division to Scopely for a whopping $3.5 billion. It’s understandable if you haven’t heard of Scopely, but if Niantic rings a bell, it’s because you—like many of us—have dabbled with Pokémon GO. The deal involves Niantic’s entire games division, which means Pikmin Bloom and the surprisingly successful Monster Hunter Now are headed to Scopely, too.
Ed Wu, the leader of the Pokémon GO team, assured players in a statement that “the entire Pokémon GO team is staying together through this partnership.” He also asserted that the move to Scopely will be “a positive step for all of you and the game’s future.” “Scopely expressed a deep admiration for this community and our team. I have every belief Pokémon GO will further flourish as part of Scopely, not only into its second decade, but for many more years to come,” Wu wrote.
But players are skeptical. Given the state of the games industry, how could they not be?
Why players are worried for the future of Pokémon GO—and why maybe they don’t need to be
Despite team lead Ed Wu’s assurance that the whole Pokémon GO team is moving from Niantic to Scopely, players have very good reason to be concerned. If the transfer happens without layoffs, it would be a miraculous outlier to a devastating industry trend. One Bluesky user wrote in response to the news: “I have a sinking feeling this is it for Pokémon GO.” Others echoed their sentiment, worried about transferring their rare Pokémon, losing access to free events, and more.
The games industry right now is full of studio buyouts and mergers, most notably Microsoft’s many acquisitions, including Activision Blizzard. Those buyouts always—always—result in layoffs. In Microsoft’s case, those layoffs weren’t just at Blizzard—even after Xbox lead Phil Daniels assured Blizzard’s workforce they’d have a good home at Xbox. Microsoft axed smaller previous acquisitions completely to pay the bill, most notably Tango Gameworks, the makers of Hi-Fi Rush.
This is just one of the reasons why, since 2023, well over 20,000 people have lost their jobs in the games industry. Even successful games at successful companies aren’t exempt from devastating layoffs that wipe out entire teams. Naturally, players are left with an inferior game in the aftermath.
Scopely, Pokémon GO’s new owner, has been acquiring a lot of studios recently. As per reporting by Polygon, Scopely began in 2011 and started releasing free-to-play mobile games. They quickly ballooned in size, largely thanks to some notable acquisitions, like FoxNext, the studio behind Marvel Strike Force.
But here’s the good news—at least some of the studios bought by Scopely actively praise their new owner for their games’ success. Former FoxNext general manager Amir Rahimi told Gamesindustry.biz in 2021 that Scopely is “a model for how mergers and acquisitions should look in this industry.” There are no reports of layoffs at FoxNext, either. Rahimi keeps using the same word Ed Wu uses in his statement: “partnership.”
The identity of the new owner, and other concerns
There’s another little twist to this, though. Scopely was purchased by Savvy Games Group, which was established in 2021 by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The company’s chairman is Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. This pairs especially uncomfortably with the recent revelation that Niantic was collecting players’ location data—although it’s unknown whether or not that data was part of the sale. Niantic, however, is creating a new AI mapping business with that data—and Scopely is a major investor.
Additionally, Scopely’s games—most notably Monopoly Go!—have a lot more prominent in-game ads and microtransactions than Pokémon GO currently has. Players are worried that those kinds of annoyances could creep into the beloved game. Unfortunately, only time will tell if that will happen.
Hopefully, Pokémon GO will simply continue as it has been. Other companies bought out by Scopely seem to have a higher-than-average opinion of their new parent company. The effects of the merger on not only Pokémon GO but Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now are still unclear.
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