Scopely buys the creator of 'Pokemon Go!' for $3.5 billion

The American company Scopely, one of the world's leading video game developers and with a Catalan soul - it bought the Barcelona-based Omnidrone in 2022 and is based in Barcelona - has completed, after weeks of negotiations, the purchase of Niantic's gaming business for 3.5 billion dollars (about 3). Niantic is known for being the software company behind the famous video game Pokémon GO, one of the most successful mobile games in the world.

Beyond Pokémon GO, the company also has titles such as Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, and complementary applications and services Campfire and Wayfarer. In fact, Niantic's gaming business has over 30 million monthly active players and generated over $1 billion in revenue by 2024. According to Scopely, the combined portfolio will create "one of the largest global player communities in the world," with over 500 million players in 2024 alone. It will spin off its technology platform into a new, standalone entity, Niantic Spatial Inc., and will be a next-generation map-powered geospatial AI company that enables devices and machines to understand and interact with the physical world. Niantic Spatial will continue to own and operate the augmented reality games. Ingress Prime and Peridot.

Thus, the company has wanted to make it clear that Niantic is not disappearing and the game development teams and their leaders will join Scopely and continue developing the game, and the roadmaps will remain intact. "Users can expect these games, apps, and events to stay true to the experiences they know and love and to be driven by the same dedicated development teams behind these products," Niantic and Scopely assured in a statement. "Scopely's role after the closure will be to empower the Niantic game team to pursue its ambitious roadmap by providing resources and support, all to give players more of what they want from their favorite games," they added.

The Catalan footprint

Since 2017, Scopely has also developed its video games—and largely—from Barcelona, ​​despite having its headquarters in the United States. But it only took seven years for it to become the largest video game development company in Spain, and in 2024, the magazineTimeselected it as one of the 100 most influential companies in the world thanks to the success ofMonopoly Go!

In fact, Barcelona has become one of the mainhubsvideo game development. The company's technology director and head of Scopely in Barcelona, Hugo Pibernat told it a few months ago in the ARA"It's the number 1 city in Europe worldwide—excluding Asia—for mobile games," says Pibernat. This executive emphasizes that Barcelona is also an ideal place to develop video games because "there's a very cool ecosystem, and there are an increasing number of graphic design companies in Barcelona."