Niantic faces lawsuit over disastrous Pokémon Go festival, postpones European events

[midian182]

Late last month, the first ever Pokémon Go festival was held in Chicago. Developer Niantic was no doubt hoping the game’s one-year anniversary celebrations would help rekindle media interest in the AR title. And it did – but for all the wrong reasons.

Not only were the 20,000 attendees met by incredibly long queues to get in and out of the event, but most people couldn't even play the game because of server problems and overloaded cell towers.

Niantic attempted to placate the angry crowds, some of whom paid hundreds of dollars for tickets from resellers, by offering $20 face value refunds, the first legendary Pokémon, $100 of in-game Pokécoins, and more.

But it seems the company's efforts weren’t enough. Niantic is now facing a class-action lawsuit brought against it by a California man who traveled to Chicago for the festival. It seeks unspecific damages against the developer and alleges that the event didn't live up to what was promised. The suit also seeks to represent other angry attendees.

"Fest attendees, many of whom like Plaintiff traveled to Chicago from other states or countries, had the reasonable expectation of arriving at Grant Park for a day of capturing rare 3D monsters with their friends, families, and other so-called Pokemon Go 'Trainers,' but the reality of the Fest fell flat in comparison to Defendant's promises," the lawsuit said. "Upon reaching Grant Park, Fest attendees encountered a 'three-mile line' and an unplayable Game."

In response to what happened in Chicago, Niantic has decided to postpone several Pokémon Go events set to take place in Europe this month. Anyone who planned to attend the August 5 meetups in Copenhagen and Prague, as well as the August 12 events in Stockholm and Amsterdam, will now have to wait until “later this fall.”

Niantic says the reason for the delay is “to guarantee the best possible gameplay experience for European Trainers.”

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https://www.techspot.com/news/70380-niantic-faces-lawsuit-over-disastrous-pokmon-go-festival.html

 

[oldikes]

They are trying to hard to pander to the people still playing the game, and ignoring the reasons that millions and millions of people stopped playing relatively quickly.
Battles are lame, theres no geographical relevancy, tracking got shut off, You cant bike or bus and play, and a host of other lame stuff. Did they ever even add trading? who knows.

It was ALWAYS and still is a crappy execution of an idea with insane potential.

 

[hkhan1989]

They are trying to hard to pander to the people still playing the game, and ignoring the reasons that millions and millions of people stopped playing relatively quickly.
Battles are lame, theres no geographical relevancy, tracking got shut off, You cant bike or bus and play, and a host of other lame stuff. Did they ever even add trading? who knows.

It was ALWAYS and still is a crappy execution of an idea with insane potential.

You hit the nail on the head!

It's Pokemon!
The generational age groups playing this game, the Nintendo brand, and the media attention it once had meant it could have been a hugely popular and successful game if they managed to just stick to what everyone thought it would be... a Pokemon game in the real world (including trading and battling).

I have no idea if it is still successful but I know after spending hours playing the game in the first few months, I haven't touched it since because the game is actually terrible.

 

[cartera]

They are trying to hard to pander to the people still playing the game, and ignoring the reasons that millions and millions of people stopped playing relatively quickly.
Battles are lame, theres no geographical relevancy, tracking got shut off, You cant bike or bus and play, and a host of other lame stuff. Did they ever even add trading? who knows.

It was ALWAYS and still is a crappy execution of an idea with insane potential.

Can't agree more. I'm waiting for someone to properly execute AR and make a game properly. I expected much better since they had a testing ground with Ingress prior to releasing Pokemon Go.

 

[petert]

When they first released the game ... same thing happened ... was in the city center, their servers went down for half a day during a Saturday ... no warning, no nothing, just starring at my screen like an ape, waiting for it to connect. Went online and saw that their servers are down. By that time, it was already one week into, after their official announcement in UK - I suspect they never improved the server load and balancing issues. Always, but always got stuff like pokemon freezing during capture, not recording my walks ... very frustrating. Cheap bastards, I drop the shite after two weeks, but enough dipshits remained because gamers are like that - they bent over and accept anything. No wonder Niantic and others can afford to pull the same tricks over and over. Please tell me how a multi-million company like Niantic cannot forsee a basic server load increase during such an event? They have by now at least one year of data usage, even an 8 year old would guess that a major event like that requires a bit of resources involved. They simply didn't care ... they just promised and didn't delivered ... glad the Americans will sue the crap out of them ...