A few clever players have discovered in the coding of Pokemon Go a clue to a possible sponsorship system between the game and iconic golden arches.
First discovered by Australian student Manu Gill, he noticed strange strings of code that he thinks alludes to the system being present in the game, but not currently active. The strings also mention McDonald’s by name. Reddit user KcYoung may have also stumbled upon the McDonald’s logo in the code.
In all the hoopla of the Pokemon Go craze, many people were wondering how the team was going to make money off of it. The app itself is free, but features an in-game shop to purchase useful items. According to the Financial Times, John Hanke, Chief Executive of Pokemon Go developer Niantic, wants to use sponsored locations in the game. This is a practice they used in their previous title Ingress.
According to Survey Monkey, Pokemon Go is now the biggest mobile game in U.S. history. As of yesterday, the game had 21 million active users in the United States. Within three days of its initial release, Pokemon Go had climbed to the top of the app charts and brought in more users than Twitter.
