Scopely staged a large, invitation-only Pokémon Go raid in Times Square on Thursday night, bringing roughly 2,000 players into one of New York’s busiest public spaces to fight Mega Mewtwo Y on their phones while the character appeared across the district’s giant screens.
The company used the event to mark the 10th anniversary of Pokémon Go, the location-based mobile game originally developed by Niantic. Pokémon Go maps game objects onto real places: players walk to physical locations, spin PokéStops for items, catch creatures, and join raids where groups attack a shared boss. In Times Square, the phone fight got the billboard treatment, which is about as subtle as this franchise gets.
Scopely said invitations went to 2,000 players from across New York City’s five boroughs through community ambassadors. Mark Van Lommel, Scopely’s director of marketing communications, said the event was kept invite-only to reduce crowding. Players were initially told only that themed raids would happen near Times Square. Later in the evening, ticketed players received in-game notifications directing them to the special event.
Before the raid, attendees saw a live EDM set by Loud Luxury. Then Mega Mewtwo Y appeared on the surrounding screens and players joined a coordinated battle. Scopely said the raid boss was defeated. The company also livestreamed the event on Pokémon websites and social channels.
The staging was a callback to Pokémon Go’s first trailer, which showed a crowd converging on Times Square for a Mewtwo fight. Michael Steranka, Scopely’s vice president of product, said the team now sees that old trailer as a set of promises the game has spent a decade trying to satisfy. Steranka worked on Pokémon Go at Niantic starting in 2017.
Pokémon Go arrived in 2016 and quickly became one of mobile gaming’s defining hits. The game recorded more than 130 million downloads in its first month and reached a peak of 232 million active players that year, according to figures cited by Wired. GamesBeat reported that Pokémon Go generated nearly $1 billion in revenue in 2016. Statista puts lifetime player spending at more than $6 billion.
Scopely acquired Niantic’s games business, including Pokémon Go, last year for $3.5 billion. Scopely says more than 800 million people have played Pokémon Go over the past decade and that players have caught more than 1 trillion Pokémon. The company also says the game had more than 100 million active players in 2024, generated $1 billion in revenue in 2025, and sees about 45 minutes of daily engagement from active players.
The company is still leaning on the part of the game that competitors have had trouble copying: getting people to leave the couch. Scopely says players have walked more than 62 billion miles while using the game. Kim Adams, vice president of game development for Pokémon Go, said the company’s community ambassador program has grown from 50 vetted volunteer organizers to more than 3,000 worldwide in the past two years.
Live events remain a core business line. Scopely said Pokémon Go sold nearly 1 million live-event tickets in 2024. Since last year, the company said, daily playtime is up 10 percent and real-world exploration is up 29 percent.
Those gatherings have not always worked. Howie Ragunton, a Federal Aviation Administration worker who has played since launch, pointed to the first Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago in 2017, where overloaded networks and unstable servers turned the event into a mess. Ragunton told Wired the company has improved since then.
For players outside New York, Scopely said a Pokémon Go Fest Global virtual event this weekend will offer the same Mega Mewtwo Y gameplay without the Times Square screens. Van Lommel said the global event will be free for players.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
