{"id":1151854,"date":"2026-02-08T06:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=541768"},"modified":"2026-02-08T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:49:10","slug":"pokemon-go-director-addresses-concerns-about-its-new-owners-and-the-future-of-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/pokemon-go-director-addresses-concerns-about-its-new-owners-and-the-future-of-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon Go director addresses concerns about its new owners and the future of the game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, Niantic announced<\/a> that its games division, which makes augmented reality games Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/a><\/em>, Monster Hunter Now<\/a><\/em>, and Pikmin Bloom<\/a><\/em>, was being sold to mobile gaming powerhouse Scopely<\/a> for $3.5 billion. The move, which had been rumored for nearly a month, raised concerns among longtime Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> players \u2014\u00a0a passionate and dedicated fan base that isn\u2019t shy about sharing its opinions \u2014\u00a0about the future of the game under Monopoly Go!<\/em> maker Scopely.<\/p>\n

As a longtime Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> player myself, I also had concerns about the game\u2019s new ownership related to monetization and sharing of player data. On Friday, I spoke with senior product director for Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> Michael Steranka \u2014 who\u2019s been working on the game for eight years \u2014 to learn more about the deal from his perspective and address burning questions from the player community.<\/p>\n

You can read our conversation below, which has been edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

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Polygon: As someone who works on the game very closely, what do you think this deal with Scopely means for <\/strong>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em><\/strong> for players?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Steranka:<\/strong> I definitely have been looking online myself and reading some player theories and hypotheses and whatnot. What I would love to be able to get across is like, Hey, it’s actually great<\/em>. It’s going to be a good thing for the game and for the communities out there. Very happy to chat with you and hopefully have an opportunity to set the record straight or at least quell a lot of the concerns that I\u2019ve been seeing from folks online.<\/p>\n

Why do you think it\u2019s going to be great? <\/strong><\/p>\n

So, I am one of the few people that\u2019s actually had the fortune of having been able to chat with members of the Scopely team for the past few months and really get to know them quite a lot before this deal got signed. In the course of getting to know the team over at Scopely, I\u2019ve come to really find that they share so many of the same values that we\u2019ve held near and dear to us at Niantic in terms of really caring about the player communities that they\u2019ve fostered through their various games. [There are] also lots of shared values on how to operate within a team and caring about the people on the teams as well. But also through those conversations, something that\u2019s become really clear to me is how they operate as an organization comprised of lots of different game teams building their total portfolio. The way that they operate is they truly give all of their individual game teams full autonomy to make the best decisions that they can for their games. There\u2019s not really a lot of top-down, executive-level guidance or pressure on any of the different game teams. They\u2019re really there to do their best to support the different teams and make sure that we have all the resources that we need to be as successful as we can.<\/p>\n

So hearing all of that, and doing my own personal investigation with friends that I know at Scopely just to get a gut check on how folks felt on the ground, I\u2019ve found that to be true and be very reassuring insofar as we\u2019re going to be able to continue to operate Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> the same way we always have, with the same practices that we always have, and evolve the game in the way that we\u2019ve always envisioned wanting to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In those discussions that you had, did you get the impression that Scopely views <\/strong>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em><\/strong> differently than its other free-to-play titles? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, yeah. This is maybe a little bit into the business side of things, but through the diligence process, they get access to everything on our side, all of our data and our [key performance indicators]. I think through looking at all of our data, they\u2019ve found just a really incredible story of a group of game developers who\u2019ve built a game very differently than any other developer in the market. And what they\u2019ve shared with us time and time again is they\u2019ve been so inspired by how we\u2019ve been able to build such a durable and just a fantastic product with such a strong, rabid fan base that they just haven\u2019t seen anywhere else. So of course they\u2019re really interested in the fact that Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> is such a stable business, but almost more than that, they\u2019ve been really interested to try to learn from us and see what they can take from how we build Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> and apply that to potentially other games in their portfolio and future games to come as well. <\/p>\n

I think the big concern is that there will be intrusive ads that will interrupt gameplay in <\/strong>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 obviously, you do have ads, but they come in a very different delivery system. Or they worry that people would be restricted on playtime and then would have to pay money to keep playing. Is that something that\u2019s going to come to <\/strong>Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em><\/strong>? <\/strong><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one takeaway that I would love for people to have from this conversation, it’s that definitively no, that is not happening in Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> \u2014 not now, not ever. Again, Scopely really recognizes how unique this game is, and they\u2019ve told us themselves that they would be foolish to try to change the recipe of what\u2019s made this such a huge hit and a success. So yeah, absolutely not. We will not be building into our games any type of obtrusive ads or anything like that. I just really want to reiterate Scopely as a company, the way that they operate is they give all of their teams the agency to make the decisions that\u2019s right for their games. And that is not something that we feel would ever be right for Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I’ve seen some concern that people’s location and movement data is being shared with a second corporation, even more people, and when you get to the top of the organizational structure, a different country. Are there any plans to address those concerns in terms of what players can keep private about their location, their travel information, the businesses they visit? Is there any thought addressing that now that you’re moving to a different company? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m happy to address that one head-on. We do not sell player data to third parties, full stop. We only leverage location data to operate the game, and we store any location data needed to operate the game on U.S.-based servers, and we follow all of the incredibly strict regulatory best practices to protect that data as best as we can. So if there are any fears that this is going to other places that you may or may not know or may or may not trust, I hope that what I’m sharing today can help quell any of those fears, because that is absolutely not something that happens today and not something that will happen in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the past, when I\u2019ve spoken to [Niantic CEO] John Hanke very briefly and other Niantic people, one of the things that I think was raised again and again was the philosophy of getting out, being active, exploring. I guess what I’m curious is, is that a Niantic-specific philosophy? Does this move change that mandate in any way? What does this mean for you to have more freedom to do beyond Niantic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is definitely a Niantic-driven mission for sure. But I will say it’s something that we on the game team also feel very passionate about as well. And I would be remiss if through this transaction, Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> became Pok\u00e9mon Stay at Home<\/em>. We still want this game to be something that at its core encourages players to go outside and explore the world and create those real-world social connections because I think that truly is what makes this game unique and as valuable as it is to a company like Scopely. So I wouldn’t expect any changes on that front anytime soon because that’s a mission that we’re hoping to carry along with us, even through this new ownership.<\/p>\n

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