- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
Niantic Inc., the company behind the 2016 hit Pokémon Go, is in talks to sell its video-game business to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely Inc., according to several people familiar with the discussions.
Yeah, that’s a whole lot of geolocation data being sold there - personal geolocation data of a lot of people.
Probably going to be deleting my account :(
I wonder how much of the location data is actually for sale. Niantic is looking to sell the game, but they are not selling their platform. I’m not sure what that would mean for any buyer; would they then need to pay licensing fees to Niantic for their map/POI/AR APIs and data indefinitely? If so, Niantic will make out like a bandit, getting a fat up-front sale AND a fat ongoing license subscription, with great leverage to increase the subscription price in the future.
At minimum, a sale of the game would include location data from:
That’s just the data that’s visible on the client side, i.e. what is verifiably required to operate the game as-is. That doesn’t mean additional data WON’T be included. It’s anybody’s guess what additional data Niantic retains on the server side, and how much of that would be included in the sale.
Yup, they’re selling the games division, which shouldn’t include Spatial/Lightship. Although it probably includes Wayfarer so I’m not sure what that would mean in practice.