Pokemon Go celebrates 10 years with a worldwide festival, as fans continue to try to catch them all
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In the short term of 10 years ago, Pokemon Go he ruled the world.
Millions of players came out to play the new mobile game, with players looking for monsters in the popular series of video games pioneered by Nintendo – crowded parks, city streets and other public places.
“Oh my God, it felt like the closest thing we’ve had to world peace,” said Ben York, who was in downtown Toronto on Saturday catching more Pokemon with his friends.
“Everybody got along with everybody. There were groups of people in the middle of the city where you wouldn’t have groups of people. You met your neighbors. [playing the game],” said Nick Clark, one of York’s friends.
While you may not see the crowd of players you did in 2016, dozens of players walking around playing on their phones — usually plugged into a battery pack — can still be seen if you look almost anywhere in certain parts of Toronto, including Nathan Phillips Square or High Park.
Pokemon Go Publisher Scopely has held special events worldwide to celebrate the 10th anniversary since the game was launched in July 2016. More than 1,000 players participated in the invasion event in New York City’s Times Square, according to Scopely, as Pokemon videos covered the square’s big screens.
The game was originally developed by California-based Niantic Labs. It was acquired by Scopely, which also develops Monopoly Go, in 2025 in a deal reportedly worth $3.5 billion. Scopely itself was acquired by Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, in 2023.
800 million players over the years
Pokemon Go has been played by more than 800 million people in more than 150 countries and regions since its launch, according to a news release from Scopely. The release is also among the top 10 most popular mobile games every year, and in 2025 alone it will generate more than one billion US dollars. (It did not specify the number of players this year.)
When it was first introduced, Pokemon Go it was hailed by some as the new frontier of gaming technology. The app features a lot of augmented reality, which superimposes real characters on realistic videos taken with your phone’s camera.
If you ask the people who still play today, though, the appeal is pretty simple: it’s about getting outside, meeting friends and catching Pokemon.
“We often use it as an excuse to get together, and we always make a day out of it. Like, we get food and hang out,” said William Rapchak, who was also out looking for Pokemon with York and Clark.
“Then Pokemon becomes the focus of a public event.”
Local data conflict
However, the game was not immune to controversy. Some players have expressed concern over the sale of the game to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely as yet another chapter in the nation’s growth in entertainment and sports that critics say hides its record of human rights abuses.
And according to a June report from Dutch retailer Trouw, data collected by Pokemon Go players involved in their area scanning quests can choose to continue to be used to train military drones.
In December, one of Niantic’s former developer companies announced a partnership with Vantor, an intelligence firm that develops software for drones, including those used by the military.
A spokesperson for Niantic denied that any data collected from the game was part of the deal, according to gaming news website IGN.
WATCH | A look at the popularity of Pokemon Go in 2016:
Players who spoke to CBC News expressed a mixture of concern and resignation at the situation. Rapchak says he considered leaving the game years ago, knowing it was impossible to predict whether Niantic would sell his user and location data for an unknown purpose.
“I never liked that, and it boggles my mind why I still play it sometimes,” he said.
He says he’s turning off the augmented reality settings on his phone, hoping it can make a difference.
Clark is very resigned to this situation. “I feel like we’re in a place where it’s like, what’s not selling our data? Like Facebook, Instagram, everybody has our data.”
Such concerns seem unlikely to completely slow down the momentum of the game, slow and steady as it may be. Scopely this week announced more than a dozen upcoming community events with exclusive in-game prizes in cities around the world. Canada is listed as one of the hosts, although no cities have been named yet.
Meanwhile, the Japan Pokemon Company, a subsidiary of Nintendo, is in the midst of celebrating its 30th anniversary. The franchise started in 1996 on the Game Boy with two Pokemon Red and blue games.
