In addition to pulling “Pokemon GO” and “Pikmin Bloom” out of Russia and making them inaccessible to players in the region, Niantic pledged to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, including UNICEF, United Help Ukraine, International Medical Corps, Sunflower of Peace, and Norwegian Refugee Council. On March 3, 2022, the developer announced in a blog post that it raised $75,000 internally by matching employee donations. On top of that, it donated $200,000 “directly to humanitarian organizations focused on supporting the people and refugees of Ukraine.”
Niantic joins other gaming companies like PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo in pulling their games out of Russia after Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called on the games industry to impose strong sanctions on Russia over its invasion of the country. EA deleted every Russian sports team from all its FIFA games and “NHL 22,” Nintendo put the Russian version of its eShop in temporary maintenance mode indefinitely, and PlayStation announced it would be suspending software and hardware shipments, the launch of “Gran Turismo 7,” and operations of the PlayStation Store in Russia.