Pokémon Go to the drones
AV Club • • technology
Key Points:
- Since 2021, Pokémon Go has encouraged players to upload videos and scans of their surroundings at Pokéstops, rewarding them with in-game items for contributing data.
- This user-generated data became valuable beyond gaming, particularly to intelligence and defense contractors like Vantor, which has been developing a Visual Positioning System (VPS) since 2025 to operate where GPS signals are jammed.
- The VPS uses combined ground-level scans from the game and aerial positioning data to create detailed 3D maps, enabling location tracking without relying on GPS satellites.
- Vantor denied directly using game data for its drones but did not confirm if upcoming models were trained on the Pokémon Go scans, which likely accelerated the system's development.
- By December 2025, Pokémon Go maintained an average of 110 million active monthly players, generating vast amounts of untraceable location data feeding into advanced mapping technologies.