this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Pokémon Go already has multiple revenue streams, including direct in-app purchases.
I think you are forgetting that Niantic made a lot of money off Pokémon GO, not ALL the money, ergo its an abject failure under capitalism and they need to pump up those numbers.
If they had been making ALL the money they might have been satisfied, for a quarter. Then they would have packaged and sold all that data for more than ALL the money.
Yeah, but many players don’t pay, especially the huge player bases of children. They can subsidise that by selling your data.
Pokemon go has been extremely profitable, the free to play model works. They don't need to subsidize shit.
Free to play games work by being pay2win and by catering to whales. Sorry but you are wrong.
I’ve been in software design and development for decades. Sorry, but you are wrong.
The reason these companies are so profitable is because they sell your data.
Whales are fine, but that’s not their only revenue stream. People freely give up their data to them and that’s stupidly valuable. If you think these companies aren’t selling it, you’re very naive.
I'm a data engineer, ofc I know that. But you were excusing it as if their service has costs. That's bs, because their reported earnings that done without whatever profit they are going to gain from this harvest of train data already were very profitable.
That's why I said you were in the wrong. Not because you expected them to sell everything they could, so did I, but because you justified that behaviour from the free to play model. That model exists in plenty games that are extremely successful without harvesting things beyond metadata.
I wasn’t justifying it. Perhaps that came across the wrong way.
They’re selling shit they never asked their users does that’s bullshit, and should be illegal. Especially with children’s data.
My point was they’re doing it.
You guys agree and it's just the word "subsidy" he has an issue with because subsidies have the connotation of helping actual people.