Pokémon Go , along with the rest of Niantic’s games business, is soon to be under new ownership after it was sold to Scopely for $3.5 Billion. Now, in a new interview, Niantic—soon to be Scopely—senior product directory Michael Steranka has addressed a number of concerns some players have about the game’s acquisition, including Pokémon Go player location data and who has access to it.
Steranka sat down for an hour-long interview with Pokémon Go YouTuber TrainerTips to talk about why the game was sold, what will change, the idea of in-game pop-up adds, and, yes, player location data being shared with the Saudi Arabian government.
For those unaware, Scopely is owned by Savvy Games Group. Savvy is a video game investment company and developer that is backed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. With the game being sold, some have posted to various social media channels worried about data getting back to the foreign government. Steranka says that players don’t have to worry about it.
“That all stays in the US,” Sternaka said regarding player location data and scanned locations. “It never leaves the country. And it’s not something that ever gets shared up with Savvy or otherwise. In fact, Scopely itself is sort of wholly owned and operated independently as well. So, there’s enough layers of separation there that you can trust all of your data stays within the servers in the United States and also, like I mentioned, we actually scrub all that data and get rid of it after its no longer needed to run the game.”
The scrubbing of the data comes from a revelation earlier in the same interview. Steranka says that “contrary to popular belief”, the company doesn’t store any player data “beyond what’s needed to actually operate the game.”
He added that all of the data will remain “fully encrypted and protected” in the same ways it has since the game first launched in 2016.
The rest of the interview is highly recommended as Steranka talks about how the game will grow after the sale, the level of involvement of The Pokémon Company, Remote Raids, and more.
Are you still playing Pokémon Go? Let us know your thoughts on the sale to Scopely down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums.
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Saudi when they buying a big publisher been years since they said it
The Saudi’s do what they want they have control