Niantic's Pokemon Go Fest 2020
Niantic's Pokemon Go Fest 2020
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Niantic recasts Pokémon Go Fest 2020 as a virtual community rebuilding event

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Niantic‘s mission is to bring people together in a gaming community, and the company sees its Pokémon Go Fest 2020 as more critical than ever as American society tears itself apart. But this time, the event will be virtual.

The virtual event is another sign that Niantic is trying to recast its entire business to deal with the new realities, whether this means retooling its location-based game to deal with the pandemic’s effect on socializing together, or facing the disruption to business as usual from the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.