Pokemon Go Had Players Capturing More Than They RealizedReleased in 2016, Pokemon Go quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Even folks who werenāt traditionally interested in the monster-taming franchise were wandering around with their smartphones out, on the hunt for virtual creatures that would appear via augmented reality. Although the number of active users has dropped over the years, itās estimated that more than 50 million users currently log in and play every month.From a gameplay standpoint, Go is brilliant. Although the Pokemon that players seek out obviously arenāt real, searching for them closely approximates the in-game experience that the franchise has been known for since its introduction on the Game Boy back in 1996.But now, instead of moving a character through a virtual landscape in search of the elusive āpocket monstersā, players find them dotted throughout the real world. To be successful, players need to leave their homes and travel to where the Pokemon are physically located ā which often happens to be a high-traffic area or other point of interest.As a game, itās hard to imagine Pokemon Go being a bigger success. At the peak of its popularity, throngs of players were literally causing traffic jams as they roamed the streets in search of invisible creatures. But what players may not have realized as they scanned the world around them through the game was that they were helping developer Niantic build something even more valuable.The Imaginary Gig EconomyThe game has used augmented reality (AR) to bring the world of Pokemon to life since day one, but it wasnāt until the fall of 2020 that Niantic introduced AR Mapping. With this new feature, players could scan real-world locations and objects by walking around them while the software captured images from their smartphoneās camera. This was presented to the player as āField Researchā, and once completed, it would unlock various rewards in the game.youtube.com/embed/naFeJxszLOs?ā¦For those with a technical mindset, the implications of this are immediately obvious. Through the Research system, Niantic could direct Pokemon Go players anywhere they wished. Once the imagery from these Research scans were uploaded, they could be used to create detailed 3D models through the use of photogrammetry. The more players that perform Field Research on a particular location, the more accurate the results.If Niantic wanted to create a 3D model of a statue in a park or the front of a building, they simply needed to assign it a Field Research task and the players would rush out to collect the data. Forget Googleās Street View ā rather than sending a camera-laden car out once every year or so to grab new images, Niantic could sit back while millions of players uploaded high resolution pictures of the world around them in exchange for in-game trinkets that have no physical value.No Such Thing as a Free PokemonIn the tech world thereās a common saying: āIf something is free, youāre the product.āThe idea being that if youāre using some service without paying for it, thereās an excellent chance that the company providing said service is somehow making money off of the situation. So for example when a user looks up a particular topic with a search engine, they can be presented with contextually appropriate advertisements. By selling this ad space to companies, the search engine provider generates a profit for each āfreeā search performed by its users. The personal relevancy offered by such bespoke advertisements can be more effective than traditional TV or print ads, which in turn means the search engine provider can charge a premium for them.Just as in our hypothetical search engine example, Pokemon Go is offered up to players on Android and iOS free of charge. To date, itās been downloaded by over a billion total users. To make the game financially viable, Niantic eventually needed to find a way to turn all those free downloads into a revenue stream.The answer is Niantic Spatial. This spin-off company was announced in March of 2025, and offers a Visual Positioning System (VPS) created in part using the photogrammetry data collected by Pokemon Go. Through this service Niantic Spatial offers centimeter-scale positioning for millions of high-traffic locations all over the globe, even in areas where GPS may be inaccurate.Earlier this week, Niantic Spatial announced they had entered into an agreement with Coco Robotics to provide VPS for their fleet of delivery robots. Images captured by the robotās onboard cameras can be fed into the VPS to provide a more accurate position than is possible with GPS, even in the best of conditions. This is particularly important for a robot that not only needs to navigate an ever-changing urban landscape, but must arrive at a precise location to successfully complete its delivery.Always Read the Fine PrintAt this point, you may be thinking to yourself that this all seems a bit shady. Can Niantic really take the data that was provided to them by Pokemon Go players and spin that off into a commercial venture that monetizes it? Of course they can, because thatās precisely what players agreed to when they installed the game.Section 5.2 of the Niantic Terms of Service, titled āRights Granted by You ā AR Contentā, states that the company retains wide-ranging rights over anything that users upload through the AR functions of their products:In short, not only can Niantic do anything they want with player submitted data, but they can pass that freedom on to other entities as they see fit. So while Coco Robotics didnāt even exist when the AR Mapping feature was added to Pokemon Go, all of the imagery that players captured since that time ā plus any images that they continue to capture ā is fair game.In the end, itās unlikely that many players will lose any sleep over the fact that they have unwittingly been collecting training data to help robots more effectively deliver pizzas. But itās also not hard to imagine a scenario in which that data ends up getting licensed out for some purpose they arenāt comfortable with.If that happens, their options may be limited. A reading of Nianticās Privacy Policy would seem to indicate that uploaded AR imagery is anonymized during processing, and as such doesnāt need to be treated in the same way that personally identifiable information would be. As such, players have the right to opt-out of uploading additional data going forward, but canāt remove whatās already been pushed into the system.Regardless of whether or not this situation impacts you directly, itās an important cautionary tale in an interconnected world where more and more of what users do online is tracked, filtered, processed, and sold off to the highest bidder. Perhaps something to keep in mind before clicking āI Agree.āhackaday.com/2026/03/12/pokemoā¦
