One of the defining games of the last decade, Pokémon Go, now belongs to the Saudi Arabia government. Mobile game maker Scopely, which is owned by the Saudi royal investment fund, announced its purchase of the hit game along with the rest of Niantic Labs game business for $3.5 billion. The sale comes after the tech company failed to create any more hits on the scale of Pokémon Go.
“Niantic games have always been a bridge to connect people and inspire exploration, and I am confident they will continue to do both as part of Scopely,” Niantic CEO John Hanke said in a press release announcing the deal. “I firmly believe this partnership is great for our players and is the best way to ensure that our games have the long-term support and investment needed to be ‘forever games’ that will endure for future generations.”
Pokémon Go, as well as other licensed augmented reality mobile games like Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom, will now join Scopely’s catalog which includes Stumble Guys, Star Trek Fleet Command, and Monopoly Go! Scopely itself was purchased by the Saudi-backed Savvy Games investment group for $4.9 billion back in 2023.
The Pokémon Go deal, previously reported by Bloomberg, is part of a number of big investments Saudi Arabia has made into the gaming world, including buying small stakes in Nintendo and Electronic Arts. These efforts, as well as recent attempts at sports washing, have drawn criticism over the country’s abysmal human rights record, including the reported killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi back in 2018.
Released in 2016, Pokémon Go introduced the already popular creature-collecting franchise to even more people, including those who you never would have expected to know the difference between a Blastoise and a Greninja. It remains a major game with over an estimated 100 million monthly active users, but Niantic’s other experiments in a similar vein never hit in the same way. One of them, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, was shutdown within three years of launching.
Pokémon Go’s $3.5 billion sale is still subject to regulatory approval and could hit snags along the way. Otherwise it will mark the biggest gaming acquisition in the industry since Savvy bought Scopely.
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