Most of us remember Pokémon Go for the all-consuming phenomenon of its release back in 2016, when cities were all of a sudden filled with people following their phones in public squares or congregating at night in parks, completely silent. Now it's more of surprise than anything else to see someone playing the game on the subway, but apparently the developers have been raking it in regardless of the popularity of their marquee title.
The company, Niantic, is privately held and has attracted enough investment to now be valued at $4 billion after a recent injection of $200 million, according to what the Wall Street Journal calls "people familiar with the matter." Last year, already a year after the release of Pokémon Go, the company was valued at $2.7 billion, so that's more than a billion dollars of growth in a year where the popularity of their main product was waning very obviously. The financial interest in the developer is likely not for the actual games they produce, but rather for the possibilities that Pokémon Go's augmented reality presents for all types of games or apps, like Niantic's upcoming Harry Potter game. Epic games, the developer behind Fortnite had a similar valuation earlier this year.