Milan’s sunny streets and packed city squares feel a long way away from the corporate boardrooms in which Pokémon Go’s future was recently decided – where it was agreed the game would be sold as part of a $3.5bn deal to the Saudi-backed Monopoly Go maker Scopely. Among the game’s thriving community, which gathered in Italy’s fashion capital over the weekend for a big City Safari meetup, there was a feeling of business as usual – though plenty of opinions on what might happen next.
The Pokémon Go community, and in particular those who travel long distances to play together, is very switched on. For many players, this game is a way of life, a hobby that connects them with friends and acts as a companion to daily exercise. Recent stats revealed that around half of the game’s regular audience play every day, and do so for an average of 40 minutes. (How many people play? 100 million people logged into Pokémon Go across 2024, with 20 million weekly players.) It wasn’t a surprise, then, that everyone I spoke to across the past weekend in Milan was aware of the game changing hands, with a range of expectations for the result.
Just a few streets over from the city’s glamourous fashion district, where Ferraris crawl down the streets and park up behind gilded ropes, the city’s packed Duomo cathedral square offered a more familiar crowd: thousands of Pokémon Go players milling about, toting backpacks, battery packs and sensible shoes. The weather was glorious – enough to consider breaking out the shorts – though the locals, more conditioned to the sunshine, continued on in padded coats.
Pokémon Go’s City Safari events are a more recent addition to the game’s physical meetup roster, a simpler evolution of the Safari Zone concept – essentially, ‘explore this area and catch as many rare creatures as possible’ – now no longer limited to a particular park. Instead, City Safari gameplay stretches across a far wider area, allowing players to get involved wherever they walk, amidst whatever other bits of sightseeing they might want to do.