The Niantic team is also rethinking how it handles live events like Pokémon Go Fest, although it doesn’t have more info to share at this stage.

As with earlier tweaks, Niantic doesn’t have much choice. It’s hard to play a location-based game when you’re discouraged or even banned from leaving your home. This just shows how much the company has to change if it’s going to keep its player base active until it’s safe to socialize once more.

Pokémon Go fans can look forward to four festivals in the first half of the year, starting with one that coincides with the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taichung from February 6th through the 9th. Next is a Safari Zone event, where players can catch region-exclusive Pokémon, in St. Louis from March 27th to 29th. Tickets for the event will be available starting on January 24th. Liverpool players are also getting a Safari Zone event from April 17th through the 19th, with tickets going on sale starting on January 31st. The last entry in the Pokémon Go calendar is another Safari Zone event in Philadelphia from May 8th through the 10th.

Meanwhile, Harry Potter fans can look forward to the second Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Fan Festival. It doesn’t have a date yet, but the first one took place over Labor Day weekend last year. Finally, Niantic has three international events planned for Ingress players. Perpetua Hexathlon is happening on February 29th, while Lexicon Hexathlon is scheduled for April 25th. Both events will take place across multiple locations in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. There’s also Requiem Anomaly Munich, which is happening on May 9th.

In addition to revealing the economic impact of its real-world events, Niantic also dropped other relevant stats. The developer said it hosted more than 2.7 million attendees across 77 festivals held in 32 countries and that they walked 6.5 million kilometers together. Since its new website was created specifically for officials interested in bringing Niantic’s events to their cities, we might see more get added to its festival calendar for the year.

Kotaku looked at 25,000 location records shared with it by 10 players of Niantic games. It found that Niantic kept about three location records per minute of Wizards Unite gameplay. That was nearly twice as many records as it kept for Pokémon Go. In one case, Niantic had at least one location record taken nearly every hour of the day. In other words, it likely swept up location data even when the user was not playing.

When Kotaku brought this up to Niantic, the company blamed the non-stop data collection on a bug in the Android version. It says the bug has been fixed. All other data collection is detailed in its privacy policy, and users can request to have their data deleted.

In its report, Kotaku warns that Niantic has enough location data to “discern individual patterns of user behavior as well as intimate details about a player’s life.” That may be true, but it’s nothing new or specific to Niantic. Google has enough location data to help investigators solve crimes — though it now lets you auto-delete your history. And bugs that leak your location data are not unheard of, just ask Twitter.

It’s not certain if this will be available for both Android (via Google Fit) and iOS (via Health) users, although that’s currently the case for the Pokémon Go crowd.

If and when this arrives, it might encourage more people to play Wizards Unite. Fitness data syncing not only helps players advance sooner, it could promote exercise from players determined to level up. A gym run or long walk counts toward your goals, after all. It won’t necessarily translate to Pokémon-level audiences, but feature parity like this could help the game’s chances.

Other community day perks include Foundables appearing more frequently, a free store pack featuring Spell Energy from the Diagon Alley shop and Dark Detectors that last twice as long. Those should help you save plenty of Muggles and ward off rogue magical creatures and misbehaving objects. Times of event vary by country, so be sure to check the schedule here, and as you play, Ninantic and WB Games hope you’ll share your progress using #WizardsUnite.

Community days were popular with Pokémon Go, and it’s not surprising that Ninantic would want to build a similar following around Wizards Unite. While Pokémon Go’s community days were monthly events, Ninantic and WB Games haven’t said how often they’ll host the Wizards Unite equivalent.

Get ready to gather your friends and head out around your neighborhood! The first Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Community Day is July 20. Learn more about Community Day here: https://t.co/7FfImK1GRd #WizardsUnite

— Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (@HPWizardsUnite) July 18, 2019

If you were disappointed at being left out of the initial Harry Potter: Wizards Unite launch, don’t worry — there’s a good chance you can play now. Niantic’s augmented reality sorcery is now available on Android and iOS in 25 more countries. This includes Canada and Mexico in the Americas as well as several European and Scandinavian countries, including France, Ireland, Germany, Norway and Sweden. You can also expect to play in a handful of other places around the world, such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

It’s not certain how wide the launch will be on June 21st. Niantic had to make some Pokémon Go players wait weeks or even months to start playing.

There’s probably a good reason for the staggered approach. Pokémon Go is still popular long after the initial phenomenon wore out, and now Niantic is introducing a similarly location-based game that has the full weight of Harry Potter fandom behind it. You can be sure there’s plenty of pent-up demand. If there’s any uncertainty, it’s whether or not Wizards Unite will repeat history in the long run and thrive well after the initial fad is over.

The worldwide launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite begins this Friday, June 21! Keep your eyes peeled and wand ready for more information as the game goes live in your region soon. #WizardsUnite pic.twitter.com/ckk4s4mi8a

— Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (@HPWizardsUnite) June 19, 2019

Harry Potter fans in Australia and New Zealand had the chance to take the beta version of the game for a spin when Niantic chose the regions as its testing grounds in May. Just like Pokémon Go, it’s a location-based AR game, so you’ll have to walk around and capture magical creatures and objects that escaped the wizarding world after the “Calamity” as a member of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force.