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Pokémon Go maker Niantic unveils Black Developers Initiative

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Pokémon Go maker Niantic announced today that it has created a Black Developers Initiative (BDI). It will provide access, opportunity, resources, and mentorship to Black game and augmented reality developers.

The announcement is a followup on commitments the company made last summer after unrest in the wake of Minnesota police killing of George Floyd. At that time, Niantic said that it was donating the proceeds toward both diversity-related nonprofits as well as starting its own initiative to help Black game and AR developers.

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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.