Pokémon Go Data To Be Sold To Saudi Arabia

Back in 2016, the world was gripped by Pokémon Go, a game that was free to download and play. Millions of players around the world could be found combing the streets and public places, trying to locate characters that, like the player’s avatar, were represented in augmented reality on players’ smartphone screens.

At its height, the game brought in more than US$6 billion in revenues for its makers, Niantic, with dividends also paid to Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, whose creations were licensed by Niantic.

The semi-immersive game-play used smartphone technologies in ways that had not been so coherently used before: phones’ cameras, gyroscopes, and geo-positioning systems together created a novel game experience that was new and quite different from the more common static console, phone, or PC games of the time.

Rich data for sale

Although the game and its inevitable imitators and spin-offs have waned in popularity, it still embodies a time in the development of technology that remains noteworthy. However, Niantic is again back in the news, thanks to its decision to sell the game and all its intellectual property to a company in which the government of Saudi Arabia is the largest shareholder.

The deal is said to be worth US$3.85 billion, a price tag that may, at first glance, seem surprisingly high, given the game’s diminished position in the collective consciousness from nearly ten years ago.

The reason for the valuation is the detailed user data accrued over the years by Niantic – especially geo-positioning information about the game’s millions of players. 404 Media, a site that covers issues around user privacy and the global trade in data, describes the sale as a “vast location data ecosystem that was previously controlled by only one American company” being passed to a “Saudi Arabian conglomerate.”

TikTok bad, Pokémon good

Given the recent outcry about privacy concerns over US citizens’ data being available to another foreign power, China (in the case of TikTok), it seems surprising that there is no similar controversy around this recent sale. But the details of the transfer of users’ data are convoluted. That’s deliberate, according to some commentators – obfuscation of the transferred ownership mechanisms and lack of clarity in the intended use of the geo-positioning goldmine will help reduce any accountability for any potential misuse.

The global trade in user data of all types is almost entirely unregulated, with many thousands of businesses dedicated to the sale of information that is trivial to assemble into personally-identifiable profiles of much of the world’s population.

In several cases, companies whose reputation is based on a particular product or service also make significant revenues from their own users’ data, and trade in data from other organisations, offering focused ‘insights’ to marketers or anyone with a few dollars.

Tertiary income streams

Adobe, for instance, is perhaps best known for its suite of creative software, including PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Premier. In 2024 Adobe’s total earnings were US$21.5 billion, including income from the Adobe Experience Cloud that “consists of tools that businesses can utilize to create and monitor marketing campaigns,” with elements including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.

The apparent normality of trade in user data means that the reasons for public and political outcry over unsafe data sharing are carefully chosen on grounds that have nothing to do privacy nor protection of sensitive information about individuals and organisations.

Any country or business’s record on human rights violations or contravention of international law is entirely moot: The mighty dollar is the sole criterion of what can be sold to whom, and the unregulated, opaque nature of the data industry is a boon to those who use and abuse information.

Every smartphone and the vast majority of software sends every user’s data by the megabyte, daily, to companies and governments who trade in information. The only aspect of the Pokémon Go sale that’s remarkable is how run-of-the-mill it is.