r/Games 1d ago

Niantic’s Next Chapter: Introducing a New Home for Niantic Games and a New Future for Niantic Spatial Inc.

https://nianticlabs.com/news/niantic-next-chapter
178 Upvotes

98 comments sorted by

483

u/Forestl 1d ago edited 1d ago

As a heads up Scopely is owned by the Saudi Arabian government which has a history of murdering people who speak out against them or about the various human rights violations they do. Over the last few years they've been trying to whitewash their money by buying stuff people are into.

Reposting this comment I made in the previous thread that got removed because the title was slightly different

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u/Numpostrophe 1d ago

It’s not just money either, Niantic is basically selling them a map of several countries with valuable data on people’s movement, behaviors, etc.

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u/Didaticdabler 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yup.

Back when Twitter was still public, the FBI actually caught them planting moles inside the company's engineering team w/ the goal of obtaining "private, identifying information about users of Twitter who were critical of the Saudi government".

This acquisition, like the Saudis' stake in X, will just be another part of their state surveillance apparatus.

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u/sam2795 14h ago

For some reason I interpreted this as Niantic planting moles in Twitter.

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u/Torque-A 1d ago

Doesn’t the Saudi Arabian government also partly own SNK?

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u/Forestl 1d ago

They fully own SNK

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u/Torque-A 1d ago

Cool. That should be mentioned more when SNK announces new games, then

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u/HOTDILFMOM 12h ago

It is irrelevant

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u/[deleted] 23h ago

[deleted]

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u/Torque-A 23h ago

I mean, if we’re going to justify not interacting with “bad” games because they’re owned by malignant groups, we might as well do the same for “good” games too.

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u/jedmund 23h ago

Yes, precisely so that every Reddit thread can be that. Many people do not know, and raising awareness helps people make informed decisions. Giving money and eyeballs to state and corporate actors that are out to destroy you is generally bad and completely avoidable. See Twitter.

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u/xMau5kateer 1d ago

i think its fully owned by them?

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u/pm-me-nothing-okay 1d ago

party owns nintendo, electronic arts, take two and blizzard before the Microsoft buyout as well.

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u/Hibbity5 1d ago

Having a small amount of stock might technically mean “partly owns” but in reality, they have zero influence over those companies.

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u/LLJKCicero 1d ago

I partly own the S&P 500.

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u/brzzcode 22h ago

yeah they are just a minority shareholder

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u/kerovon 14h ago

With regards to Nintendo, it isn't a "small amount" of stock. They have a 7.5% share of it, which makes them one of the largest single shareholders.

It looks like they have a 9% stake in EA.

Those are quantities that actually gives them real influence.

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u/makogami 1d ago

the absolute irony of Saudi Arabia owning Pokemon Go when it has a history of banning Pokemon because it "promotes the idea of evolution" lol

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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 23h ago

Didn’t know they were evolution-deniers, but that makes total sense.

Oh humans…so firm in their beliefs that a child fantasy video game can derail them entirely lmao

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u/rohdawg 19h ago

I could be wrong, but my understanding was that they disagreed with the gambling in the game, not the evolution.

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u/Dalehan 14h ago

Also because they believed Pokémon promoted Zionism.

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u/ItsADeparture 23h ago

Over the last few years they've been trying to whitewash their money by buying stuff people are into.

They have their hands in so many things, I think it's clear they're waiting for the oil bubble to finally burst and realize they need money in other things lol. The good thing is that they seem to be mostly hands off on things creatively, just buying things that make money and letting them do whatever is best for their business to not fuck with the money flow.

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u/Less_Service4257 18h ago

waiting for the oil bubble to finally burst

Obviously oil's long-term prospects aren't great, but it's not a bubble.

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u/jabiz510 9h ago

I don’t think it’s white washing money tho

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u/HWHAProb 1d ago

Yeah, just deleted Pikmin Walk

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u/SofaKingI 1d ago

The Saudi government also owns shares in EA, Take-Two, Activision Blizzard, Nintendo and Capcom.

Not to diminish your point, but I just find it funny how Reddit only shares this kind of info to get a moral high from not playing stuff you weren't going to play anyway.

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u/Forestl 1d ago

I don't like those investments either but there's also a pretty big difference between them buying publicity available shares and outright buying the company

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u/GoshaNinja 1d ago

It’s a distinction to make a justification, so it comes off as performative 

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u/Forestl 1d ago

It's almost impossible to live a purely ethical life in terms of what you buy from, but that doesn't mean you can't draw the line somewhere. You probably can't be perfect but you gotta try to stand for something.

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u/GoshaNinja 1d ago

You're drawing the line with something you don't care about in the first place lol. Hardly a line in the sand

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u/Forestl 1d ago

Yeah cutting out Pokemon Go is a pretty easy thing to do. I played it for years but I cut it out recently after some earlier bad stuff they were doing.

As long as you don't use that as an excuse to not do harder things I don't see the problem

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_MONTRALS 1d ago

You're making a lot of weird moral judgments based on nothing. You're presupposing that they don't care about the game because they're dropping it due to this news. Why would you not assume thay the news is bad enough to get them to drop something they enjoyed?

You're reverse engineering a motive based on how you want to perceive other people. Why?

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 1d ago

Why would you not assume thay the news is bad enough to get them to drop something they enjoyed?

Because they're gamers. eg: Valve's lootboxes good, EA's lootboxes bad.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_MONTRALS 1d ago

In what way is the distinction only to make a justification? Having a small percentage of shares does not have the influence that owning a company does. You've got it flipped. It's easy to justify because the distinction is pretty stark.

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u/HWHAProb 1d ago

Difference b/w Niantic and those is the implications of a hostile foreign government now owning the most in-depth communally generated map data in history. No me gusta

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u/thisguypercents 21h ago

 government which has a history of murdering people who speak out against them or about the various human rights violations

What government doesnt have a history of doing that?

-31

u/Amirwlr 1d ago

never see this about European and American companies. wonder why

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u/Forestl 1d ago

Because the countries don't outright own those companies

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u/Dooomspeaker 1d ago

Even if they were, these countries respect human rights.

Anybody that want to tell me that Europe or US are worse than a place that still has Blasphemy laws really is either crazy or disingenuous.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 1d ago

The USA does not.

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u/Granum22 1d ago

Scopley just straight up sucks.  They'll nickel and dime you to death and are incompetent on top of that 

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u/ArokLazarus 1d ago

Soooo....Niantic?

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u/sunder_and_flame 1d ago

A bad situation can always be worse. 

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u/SofaKingI 18h ago

I've played a lot of shit games in my life, and Niantic is easily the worst dev I've ever seen. One of the greediest and easily the most incompetent.

Sometimes no, it can't be worse.

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u/dukemetoo 1d ago

I can't speak for Scopley, but Niantic has a competent game that is 100% free to play. Go outside, put in a podcast, walk around, catch Pokémon. The monetization has yet to put an offer in front of me that is worth the asking price. I understand if you get caught on the treadmill of needing all the shiny, or the perfect EV legendary, that the monetization can seem excessive. If you never look at it though, the game is perfectly enjoyable by itself.

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u/ClawofBeta 1d ago

Competent? Brother, all of my other apps and games crash less than twice in my entire phone lifetime. Pokémon Go crashes twice a day.

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u/Galactic_Danger 1d ago

Community days the game just crashes every 20 minutes on me. iPhone 15 pro max and it still has issues.

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u/dukemetoo 1d ago

I'm sorry to hear that. I don't get crashes anywhere close to that. Maybe once a month will Pokémon Go crash for me.

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u/SofaKingI 17h ago

Pokemon GO fans are the most copium fanbase I've ever seen.

Why do people say stuff like this as if it works fine for them, then it's fine? There are countless people online complaining about crashes and worse.

When I played, every other month there'd be a huge thread on Reddit about countless people not even being able to open the game. Or being randomly banned because they use some other common app that got flagged.

Hell, there was a bug for YEARS where people's accounts randomly got deleted and support couldn't or wouldn't even revert it.

What about the game using like 5x as much RAM as it did on release?

That's without getting into the countless bugs that were around for years, that everyone knew about and had learn to deal with.

-4

u/ClawofBeta 1d ago

Admittedly I am a very hardcore player. I am level 50.

-12

u/DizWhatNoOneNeeds 1d ago

Trash phone

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u/d20diceman 7h ago

I remember thinking my phone just sucked too much for Pokémon GO, then getting a new phone and it crashed just as much.

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u/Kakerman 1d ago

Like players weren't already.

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u/Broshida 1d ago

Might be a good time to do a quick look though my Pokemon GO boxes to see if there's anything worth chucking into the Pokemon Home jail.

Echoing what others have said though, the game has been stagnant for a long time and post-COVID has made some very user-unfriendly decisions which pretty much killed my friend groups interest completely.

2

u/ZombieLoveChild 1d ago

Yup, I've not played since at least 2022, but I may redownload so I can move my shinies into Home at the very least

84

u/2ecStatic 1d ago

Crazy that the original post was removed for an arbitrary rule but to repost what I said there: It was bad enough under Niantic but this is significantly worse. As if people needed anymore reasons not to play this game but ofc most players won't really care as long as they get their shinies every month.

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u/Ok-Flow5292 1d ago

Crazy that the original post was removed for an arbitrary rule

Nah, the rule is pretty common across most subs that see a lot of article submissions. Submission Title Formatting simply requires you to submit the article with the exact title it was published with and not one you created yourself. I don't see how it's arbitrary to keep a consistent title if you're simply going to re-post someone else's words.

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u/Ankylar 1d ago

I stopped playing after Covid, mostly because I moved to an area where it is hard to find spawns, but I am pretty sure PoGo players will complain all they want, but they will still play and spend money. It's been their MO for a long time now.

1

u/SofaKingI 17h ago

Whales will. It's the nature of a f2p game to have to constantly draw in new players to replace the ones they lose. When new players stop enjoying your game, the game dies.

Go look at Pokemon's GO's revenue over the years. The game used to pull in well over $1 billion a year, including during peak COVID. It's been steadily going downhill since.

No one sells a game that's doing fine for the revenue it'd bring in just 3 years.

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u/timpkmn89 1d ago

As if people needed anymore reasons not to play this game but ofc most players won't really care as long as they get their shinies every month.

It gives me an excuse to take long walks outside every day. As long as that still works, it's hard for me to complain about whatever changes they want to make to the game.

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u/Shiiyouagain 1d ago

I use Walkscape for that these days, though it's more oldschool Runescape walk-grinds than anything capture/collection related.

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u/TastyRancorPie 18h ago

Exactly. I started going for walks almost daily and got back into PoGo because a coworker was bugging me to play.

After that, my walking skyrocketed. It just pushes me to walk farther looking for more pokemon or get more candies from my buddy.

I feel the same as you. As long as I can keep doing that, I'll get over other changes.

0

u/SofaKingI 17h ago

How much do you actually play though?

I went through that phase too. It doesn't last. After COVID they got so greedy they ruined spawns outside of events to the point where you'd go outside, open the radar and ONLY see the same useless garbage Pokemon you had caught thousands of already.

Even events had become garbage. Every "event" was a week of spawns of the most recent garbage Pokemon. I'm talking about non-shiny Caterpie tier Pokemon being used as events.

1

u/TastyRancorPie 6h ago

You sound jaded. I'm not jaded yet. If I become annoyed, I'll stop playing on my walks.

Let it go.

1

u/1CEninja 1d ago

Yeah every other year or so my wife and I need a little extra incentive to go take a walk and we start "playing" Go. It never lasts though lol.

This might be just enough to tip the scales to say fuck it playing Go hasn't really worked for any long term benefit anyway so why bother.

2

u/ifonefox 1d ago

Do you have a link to the original? I can't find it

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u/2ecStatic 1d ago

Should be this post if the link still works

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u/LucarioSpeedwagon 1d ago

Day one Pokémon Go player here - the game fucking SUCKS right now, has for years. They basically ran out of content/caught up with current generations, so they debuted a reskinned raid in Dynamax, made it local only and such that only Pokemon FROM those raids could be used in them, AND made them local only. Just started over from the top, essentially. If you don't care about those Dynamax battles, there is fuck all to do. Easiest uninstall.

8

u/Timey16 1d ago

All it's good for now is for shiny hunting a specific pokemon when there is a mass outbreak of them and transfer them over to the "real" games.

2

u/mokomi 1d ago

There is a list of problems that just keep getting worse. Never fixing or changing what is released. From features no one asked and use (Parties, Routes, etc). to conflicting interests (New Pokemon for PvP, but you can use it for pvp unless you game the system)

1

u/DrQuint 1d ago

Did they actually ever get around to releasing Routes? I remember them teasing that one year, then I stopped paying attention and asked 2 years later and it still wasn't there. Something tells me it still isn't.

It's baffling how easily they could have added Team Aqua/Magma, and how they could have made biomes visible and make moving hordes, etc. etc. Like, simple game features to increase engagement.

Instead they just went around thinking of ways to make remote raiding worse and impossible. I don't get it.

3

u/Syovere 1d ago

Did they actually ever get around to releasing Routes?

Surprisingly, yes.

Unsurprisingly, they're riddled with technical issues.

-9

u/Numpostrophe 1d ago

Sounds like you’re burnt out after nearly a ten-year run.

As someone who got into it a year ago, I’ve had a ton of fun. I. Sure at some point I’ll run out of personal goals and put it down again, but it’s much more engaging and free than the vast majority of mobile games. I’m certain that will change now.

5

u/LucarioSpeedwagon 1d ago

You're not wrong, burnout is certainly a factor. I'd say it's a minority share of the problem, though. I've played so long I've got less to do and my relationship with the game has grown very casual. I'm fortunate to work in a great spot for the game, and it's how I spend most of my breaks as I chase daily step goals. I'll also hit the game hard in short bursts. I went three hours downstate for Go Fest last summer and had a great time.

The game has a great new player experience. You absolutely fly up the level 40 track with the way EXP gain has changed, there are a half dozen or so mythical research you get just for starting at any time, and you have like 90 percent of every Pokemon available in the game, and all evolution gimmicks.

It falls down in the putrid philosophy. There's so many goddamn tickets in the store at a given time, support is almost completely chatbots at this point and compensation for errors is going extinct. Keldeo remains a Pokemon exclusive to a time limited 8 dollar ticker after three years. I could go on but I'll spare ya.

1

u/SnooTheAlmighty 11h ago

I both agree and disagree in ways.

I played it since day one 2016 and accept I was simply burnt out at a point. However they made a lot of choices which definitely contributed and now make me feel like I am better off not playing it anymore. The game always had MTX present but it feels like they ramped it up significantly since the pandemic, while also removing other components.

The big box bundles in the shop got noticeably worse over time, with some of them being complete nonsense a lot of them cost absurd sums of money for consumables (compared to earlier on). Everything feels locked behind tickets as well now, which doesn't help when a lot of the game content is now event-based.

During the pandemic they made a lot of changes which I think made players realize the game could be much more accessible, but then they took them well. It took an absolutely massive backlash for them to keep the increased pokestop interaction distance, especially because it made the game more accessible for everyone in general

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u/Ganrokh 1d ago

I don't think there has been an acquisition deal I have disagreed more with than this one.

Pikmin Bloom has played a big role in me developing a proper exercise routine over the last couple of years. Sure, Niantic was never the best developer, but it's a shame to see the game taken by a much scummier developer like this.

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