Saudi Arabia, a human rights abuse factory covered in signs that say “But wait, no, look over there,” continues to treat video games as the latest extension of a reputation-laundering strategy that also includes rampant sportswashing. This week alone, Scopely, a subsidiary of a company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, bought Pokémon Go, and Capcom struck a three-year deal with Saudi Arabia’s less-popular-than-it-wants-you-to-believe Esports World Cup. In both cases, the implications are unsettling, to say the least.
Scopely’s $3.85 billion purchase of Pokémon Go also includes Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now, and, in all likelihood, your data. Late last year, Pokémon Go creator Niantic announced that it was using the game to create an AI model that can navigate the physical world – a scheme players scarcely could have imagined back when they first opted into its terms of service back in 2016 – and now it’s spinning that project off into a separate business called Niantic Spatial. As 404 points out, Scopely is investing $50 million in that new venture, suggesting an ongoing relationship between the two:
What is happening here, then, is that an already very complicated and vast location data ecosystem that was previously controlled by only one American company (Niantic) has now become a far more complicated location data ecosystem controlled by an “American” company that is wholly owned by a Saudi Arabian conglomerate whose largest shareholder is the Saudi Arabian government. Pokémon Go and all of the games Niantic is selling to Scopely require a player’s location in order to work at all, and Pokémon Go is partially monetized with in-game, location-targeted ads.
There is no world in which Scopely does not collect players’ locations moving forward. But what remains unclear is what is going to happen with location data moving forward and what is going to happen with historic location data.
While of comparatively less consequence, Capcom’s deal with the Esports World Cup is nonetheless another telling example of how Saudi Arabia’s playing the game. This is a long-term relationship that will make EWC functionally unavoidable within Street Fighter 6’s official esports ecosystem. According to Esports Advocate, “the top eight players from CAPCOM CUP 1 and 12 players from the Street Fighter League: World Championship will get direct qualification for the EWC 2025 Street Fighter 6 Finals” and “an additional 10 slots will be awarded to winners of the Capcom Pro Tour 2025 events, including Evo Japan and Vegas, CPT Combo Breaker, Blink Respawn, and CPT CEO.” EWC-related activations will also appear in Street Fighter 6’s in-game interface.
So basically, if you enjoy Street Fighter 6 or even count yourself as a casual observer of centerpiece events like Evo, you’ll be unable to escape the looming specter of the Esports World Cup.
If you’d like to brush up on Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuse record – which includes such hits as hostility against women and LGBTQA+ people, as well as apparent war crimes in Yemen and “death sentences following grossly unfair trials” – Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have you covered. Companies and publications will try to make this normal, as they have in the sporting world. Don’t let them.
