Saudi Arabia Buys Pokémon Go, and Probably All of Your Location Data.

The Saudi government could obtain endless amounts of data regarding the location of Pokémon Go players within some time. Niantic, the company responsible for the app, which is recognized as a worldwide phenomenon, is in fact selling it to Scopely, a company controlled by a Saudi company called Savvy Games. The latter is owned by the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund.

Along with Pokémon Go, Niantic is also selling Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, two other mobile games whose main mechanics require spending time outdoors and use player tracking. In addition, the deal also includes Campfire, an app that facilitates “in real life” encounters to play Pokémon Go together, and Wayfarer, another app that uses game users to map real-world locations.

The companies involved recently published more than six posts about this change: none of them shared information pertinent to the future of the location data of more than 100 million players.