‘Not now, not ever’: Pokemon Go exec says Scopely acquisition won’t lead to intrusive ads or timed energy
“They would be foolish to try to change the recipe of what’s made this such a huge hit”
Scopely’s recent acquisition of Niantic’s games business doesn’t mean Pokémon Go will start seeing intrusive ads, timed energy or other disruptive mechanics seen in other free-to-play games.
That’s according to the game’s senior product director Michael Steranka, who says Scopely has assured him things won’t change too drastically for Pokémon Go players.
In an interview with Polygon, Steranka – who has worked on Pokémon Go for the past eight years – was asked if the Scopely acquisition will eventually lead to Pokémon Go getting ads which interrupt gameplay, or situations where players are restricted on playtime and have to pay money to keep playing.
Steranka explained that this would never happen, because Scopely appreciates what made Pokémon Go so successful and doesn’t want to rock the boat by messing with the formula.
“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 Pokémon Go – not now, not ever,” he replied.
“Again, Scopely really recognises how unique this game is, and they’ve told us themselves that they would be foolish to try to change the recipe of what’s made this such a huge hit and a 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’s right for their games. And that is not something that we feel would ever be right for Pokémon Go.”
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Steranka also addressed concerns that players’ location and movement data is now being shared with a second corporation, saying: ” We do not sell player data to third parties, full stop. We only leverage location data to operate the game, and we store any location data needed to operate the game on US-based servers, and we follow all of the incredibly strict regulatory best practices to protect that data as best as we can.”
It was announced earlier this month that Pokemon Go, Monster Hunter Now, and the rest of Niantic’s games business was being sold to Monopoly Go maker Scopely in a deal worth $3.5 billion.
Niantic, the developer that shot to fame due to the overwhelming success of Pokemon Go, now boasts over 30 million monthly active users, across Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom and more.
