Pokemon Go director addresses major concerns following Scopely acquisition

Pokemon Go director has assured fans they won’t have to worry about these things coming to the game following the Scopely deal.

When it was released in 2016, Pokemon Go immediately took the world by storm. Almost ten years later, despite fans criticizing parts of the game, the augmented reality title still has an active community of players.

So, when the news that Niantic just sold Pokemon Go to Scopely finally broke, as well as other titles under the company’s gaming division, naturally, a lot of players were immediately worried about the direction of where the game was going to be headed.

Some of the immediate concerns were related to changes in microtransactions and ads. Following this, the Pokemon Go director has just spoken up to give more details to fans.

Pokemon Go director assures players the game will not have “obtrusive ads” after Scopely deal

In an interview with Polygon, senior product director Michael Steranka addressed burning questions that have been quite a hot topic within the community. When asked if there’ll be “obtrusive ads” restricting people from playing and ruining the overall gameplay after the Scopely acquisition, the answer is “a definitive no.”

He said: “If there’s one takeaway that I would love for people to have from this conversation, it’s that definitively no, that is not happening in Pokemon Go — not now, not ever.” 

He then explained that Scopely “really recognizes how unique the game is”  and that it would be “foolish” to change “the recipe” of what already makes the game “such a big hit and 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 are right for their games,” he added before going on to say that isn’t something that “would ever be right” for Pokemon Go.

Aside from this, Steranka has also reassured players about their concerns with privacy issues.  “We do not sell player data to third parties, full stop,” he said.

According to the director, only location data is used to operate the game, and any needed location data is stored on U.S.-based servers. The team also follows “all of the incredibly strict regulatory best practices to protect that data” as best they can.