Pokémon Go scans apparently landing at US drone firm Vantor – criticism over military use

How the scan feature works

This data has been sold to third parties since 2021 under the product name Niantic Spatial. One of the best-known buyers, according to the report, is the robot manufacturer Coco Robotics. At the end of 2025, Niantic also announced a partnership with the US software company Vantor, which specializes in spatial intelligence for the defense sector. Vantor is developing an AI solution for drones that must operate without GPS – a need that arises, among other places, in war zones such as the Russian-Ukrainian war, where GPS jammers regularly rob drones of their orientation.

According to DroneXL, a system by Vantor uses training data such as Niantic's recordings to determine positions. In its promotional material, Vantor advertises its technology using, among others, the MQ-9 Reaper, a combat drone for reconnaissance and combat missions. The planned use of the VPS (Visual Positioning System) navigation system is for military drones, vehicles, and augmented reality glasses. Upon request, Vantor stated that it does not use data directly from Pokémon Go, but did not comment on whether the current military AI model was trained with player data in the past.

From gaming fun to drone technology

The way VPS works is based on devices being able to orient themselves on the street by means of tiny visual recognition points – often only a few pixels in size – similar to how Google Maps does when the GPS signal is weak. For each 360-degree recording at a Pokéstop, the players transfer the rights to the recordings to Niantic Spatial. Many players had found the feature uncomfortable from early on. On Reddit, one user wrote: „Ich sehe wie ein komischer Typ aus und der Standort ist genau neben einer Tagespflege, meine Güte." In the forum, „reden sie nur darüber, wie nervig sie diese Aktivität finden und dass sie sich merkwürdig dabei fühlen."

Sharp criticism of the practice comes from Jeroen van den Hoven, Professor of Ethics and Technology at TU Delft. For him, the circumstances surrounding Pokémon Go are „eine eindeutige rote Flagge". He accuses the company of having collected data „heimlich" and suspects that management had the later lucrative applications in mind when Pokémon Go launched in 2016. Van den Hoven said: „Ohne die große Menge an Scans all dieser Gamer wäre die Entwicklung dieses Systems niemals so schnell gegangen. Die Spieler haben indirekt […] einen Beitrag zu militärischen Anwendungen geleistet."

Ethical concerns and demands on the EU

Van den Hoven is calling on the EU Commission to better protect user data in Europe. As an example, he cited the case: „Wenn Elon Musk zum Beispiel seine Starlink-Satelliten ausschaltet, hat jeder die Orientierung verloren. Es ist wichtig, dass Europa ein funktionales Äquivalent zu diesem VPS-System entwickelt." His argument: whoever possesses such key spatial technologies also has political leverage – all the way to the question of whether services can be switched off.

Open questions

Meanwhile, the ownership structure of Pokémon Go has changed: at the beginning of 2025, Niantic's gaming division was taken over by the US company Scopely, which in turn belongs to Savvy Games Group, the gaming arm of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund. The scan data itself, according to the report, is held by Niantic Spatial, which emerged from the original developer studio. Niantic itself had announced in 2021 that it would use the player community to generate data – „Kurz gesagt: Niantic nutzt seit 2021 die Pokemon-Go-Community aus, um Daten für möglicherweise militärische Zwecke zu verkaufen," Trouw summarizes. Originally, it had been reported that the scans served primarily to train delivery robots.

It remains unclear what legal steps against the data use are possible and whether supervisory authorities in the EU or the US will launch investigations. It is also unclear to what extent player data has specifically flowed into the military AI model. Vantor has so far refused to comment on this.