Niantic pulls the plug on AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Niantic is pulling the plug on the Harry Potter: Wizards Unite mobile game. The AR game can still be played until January 31, 2022, after which the game will go offline. The game maker does not mention a specific reason for the game’s discontinuation.

Niantic will announce the closing of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite on Tuesday. The game will be discontinued after two years and will disappear completely from January 31, 2022. Before that, the game will already be removed from the various app stores on December 6. From that day on, it will also not be possible to make in-app purchases.

It is not clear why the game is being taken offline. The game allowed players to walk through their neighborhood and complete quests related to the Harry Potter universe. The game is very similar to Niantic’s other AR game: Pokémon GO.

After release, the Harry Potter game was still discredited, because Niantic collected a lot of data from users. The game collected twice as much data as Pokémon GO. According to the game maker, this was due to a bug.

In addition to the Harry Potter and Pokémon games, Niantic also released a game based on the board game Catan: Catan World Explorers. However, this game was discontinued after less than a year. According to the team behind the game, Catan World Explorers deviated too much from what the team originally envisioned. The discontinuation of Catan World Explorers and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite doesn’t stop Niantic from coming up with new AR games. The developer announced last month that the Pikmin Bloom-AR game is coming soon.