Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, is in talks to sell off its games for $3.5bn to the Saudi Arabia-owned Monopoly Go! publisher Scopely, a new report has stated.
Bloomberg revealed the potential deal today, though stated the agreement was still yet to be finalised. Niantic and Scopely both declined to comment on the report.
If the deal went through, ownership of Niantic’s smash hit Pokémon Go would transfer to Scopely, alongside the rest of the company’s gaming portfolio.
Currently, Niantic also runs Monster Hunter Now in collaboration with Capcom, and Pikmin Bloom in collaboration with Nintendo. Niantic’s first game, Ingress, is also still operational. All are believed profitable – Pokémon Go still in particular – but Niantic has faced repeated layoffs in recent years as it has struggled to replicate Pokémon Go’s lightning-in-a-bottle success, and the company has always been, at its heart, a technology firm fascinated by AR and mixed reality technology.
Scopely is best known as the company behind Monopoly Go!, the biggest mobile hit of 2023 that continues to dominate app store spending. Savvy Games Group, an arm of Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF), snapped up Scopely for $4.9bn in July 2023.
Savvy Games Group has notable stakes in a raft of other companies, including EA, Take-Two, Embracer and Nintendo – of which it currently owns 7.5 percent. Last month, Ubisoft declined to comment that it was also working on a deal with the PIF.
The PIF is an initiative designed as a way to diversify the country’s revenues via investment in foreign companies. It’s chaired by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial ruler blamed by the CIA for the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and who has upheld the country’s notoriously poor human rights record.
In April last year, Savvy’s boss Brian Ward told Bloomberg that the company wanted to buy an unnamed “genre-leading” mobile game via Scopely as “the “tip of the spear” for its mobile investment.
Niantic and Savvy then publicly cosied up in August last year, when the companies signed a memorandum of understanding designed to expand Pokémon Go within the Middle East.
Niantic declined to comment to Eurogamer this morning.
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