'Pokemon Go' Maker Nears $3.5 Billion Deal To Sell Games Unit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Niantic, the company behind the 2016 hit Pokemon Go, is in talks to sell its video-game business to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely, according to several people familiar with the discussions. A deal could be announced in coming weeks. The price being discussed is about $3.5 billion, according to one of the people. Any agreement would involve the Pokemon title as well as other mobile games, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. There's no assurance an agreement will be reached.

Mmm, geodata...

[nicolaiplum]

That's a whole lot of geolocation data being sold there - personal geolocation data of a lot of people.

Re: Mmm, geodata...

[friedchikun]

Holy shit, I didn't think of that one. The Saudi Arabia government having access to all that is too much of a risk.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

Niantic was actually founded and funded by dudes tightly linked in with CIA front companies. Not a conspiracy theory, confirmed stuff.

Ever wondered why the mosques had so much trouble with rare pokemon turning up in mosques leading to kids running around with phones pointing them everywhere. Yeah.

Re:

[Shag]

Yeah, John Hanke spent a few years in the foreign service, then after B-school founded a company that visualized geospatial data, "Keyhole," which had the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel as a funder. Google bought it, and it turned into Google Earth and Google Maps.

And it's not just data on where phones go (and don't - "holes" in traffic patterns can indicate restricted areas) -- there's also databases with a ton of coordinates for various places and things, and more recently with 3-d data on them from players

Re:

[cfalcon]

>Ever wondered why the mosques had so much trouble with rare pokemon turning up in mosques leading to kids running around with phones pointing them everywhere. Yeah.

Did you make this up entirely, or are you recalling some random crap you read on raddle years ago? Because I'm pretty fucking sure this never happened.

First, when you play pokemon go, it isn't using your camera to record things, but it is definitely storing your location. Usually to get visual data, they rely on certain features, such as a

Re:

[smooth wombat]

Did you make this up entirely, or are you recalling some random crap you read on raddle years ago? Because I'm pretty fucking sure this never happened.

Several [inverse.com] stories [forbes.com] from that time [betootaadvocate.com] about players being directed to mosques [blogspot.com], and churches, to catch 'em all.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

The betoota times one is a parodyt, but it was a parody of a thing that was happening at the time, mosques having trouble with kids barging in to catch-em-all

And yeah, the "telemetry" those things where sending was off-the-scale. Photos, videos, all that.

Re:

[technosaurus]

Its just a strange quirk of Pokemon behavior that they preferentially like to hide in areas outside the reach of Google StreetView. /s

Re:

[Tiek00n]

Well, that's if they sell the geodata associated with the game, which isn't a guarantee. I assume part of this is intended to help Niantic pivot more into trying to develop their "Large Geospatial Model (LGM)" that they've been collecting data on for a long time. Look at Harry Potter Wizards Unite for a model where one company (Warner Bros) was responsible for the game that was utilizing APIs and licensing data provided on the back-end by Niantic. It's possible that ownership of geolocation data stays in Ni

There goes that

[CEC-P]

I didn't think anyone could manage the game worse the Niantic's clueless, suit-heavy dinosaur asses. BUT there's a trend in this sort of thing lately. Broadcom bought VMware and spiked the price. Some assholes bought BlueBeam and spiked the price over 10x. Martin Skreli ups the price of some medication like 50x.
Hmmm I wonder why Saudi Arabians want Pokemon Go? They must just be huge gamers and want to develop the product they love into less of a manipulative addiction platform and more into a game and revive the player base. DEFINITELY not to burn it to the ground while tripling prices!

That's me leaving, then

[alanw]

I've been playing almost since the start, and have walked 5,931km whilst playing.

1) I don't trust the Saudis with my GPS location details.
2) I won't forget their murder and butchery of Jamal Khashoggi.
3) This seems like yet more sportswashing.
4) They will try to extract as much money from players as
      possible: see what they've done to Monopoly Go - "pay to win".
5) and now I'm at level 16, it's become a bit boring.

I'll be deleting my account.

Re:

[Dru Nemeton]

I deleted my after getting a brand new, top-of-the-line phone!

It was also because a Slashdotter made a comment (paraphrased), "Pokemon Go plays like a Web App that someone placed in a Mobile Wrapper and dumped on the market." Didn't really think too much of it at the time...

However once I saved up and finally purchased a 'Flagship Phone' to play with, I was (somewhat) gutted by the abysmal performance it had. There really wasn't that much of a difference between my 4 year old phone vs. my brand new phone.

Re:

[Tiek00n]

You claim that you've been playing almost since the start and walked almost 6,000km but you're level 16? I call BS on that. I have a friend that played for like a day shortly after it came out, a day in Hawaii last year, and like 2 days this week. With about 25km walked, 200-250 Pokemon caught, and 100 Pokestops visited she's level 20.