Niantic sells Pokémon Go

Oh YES!

to Saudi Arabia

Oh. Oh no.

I wonder how much of the location data is actually for sale. Niantic is looking to sell the game, but they are not selling their platform. I’m not sure what that would mean for any buyer; would they then need to pay licensing fees to Niantic for their map/POI/AR APIs and data indefinitely? If so, Niantic will make out like a bandit, getting a fat up-front sale AND a fat ongoing license subscription, with great leverage to increase the subscription price in the future.

At minimum, a sale of the game would include location data from:

• All pokemon caught, which persists on the client side until they are transferred.
• Stops that have been visited, which persist on the client side unless and until the stop is deleted from the game (which is rare).
• Gyms that have been visited and how much they’ve been interacted with in different ways. That persists on the client side indefinitely (only the 1000 gyms you’ve interacted with most recently are visible in the client, but IIRC if you then interact with an older gym you’ll still have the same progress on it).
• Routes followed, with a tally of how many times.
• Any postcards sent that have been saved by either the sender or the recipient.
• Any gifts sent if the recipient got an egg from them and kept the hatched pokemon (it would have the location of the gift along with the sender’s account ID).

That’s just the data that’s visible on the client side, i.e. what is verifiably required to operate the game as-is. That doesn’t mean additional data WON’T be included. It’s anybody’s guess what additional data Niantic retains on the server side, and how much of that would be included in the sale.