Niantic Sued By Attendees Over Pokémon Go Fest Fiasco
The Pokémon Go Fest, which marked the game’s first anniversary turned out to be an absolute disaster. The fest was supposed to be a huge celebration. Players were promised rare Pokémons, rewards, training tips but were served with nothing but disappointment.
The event seemed to be a magnet for screw-ups. The attendees waited for hours to play, only to be told that the games are not working. The game servers quit working (due to the congested network) and the company had no backup plan. Maybe Niantic wasn’t prepared for neither the server load nor the network congestion.
The fest fiasco obviously didn’t go down well with the event attendees. Few of the visitors decided to file a class action lawsuit against the company. According to reports, the attendees want to be reimbursed for the travel and other expenses as Niantic failed to deliver on its promises of an unmatched gaming experience.
Soon after the disaster, Niantic issued an apology to mitigate the situation and offered to reimburse the event tickets of all gamers present. The CEO also stated that all visitors will further receive $100 of in-game credit, along with the promised legendary Pokémon Lugia for free.
But the reimbursement and the $100 of in-game credit weren’t enough to pacify the case. Some angry visitors threw water bottles onto the stage, chanting, “We want refunds!”. Though the company’s apology was acknowledged but it wasn’t enough for the people who travelled from far and incurred huge expenses just to attend the event.
Jonathan Norton, a California local who flew to Chicago for the Pokémon Go Fest, has filed a lawsuit against Niantic for false advertisement. According to his lawyer, Thomas Zimmerman, 20 to 30 others have joined the suit. and that they will be asking for monetary compensations for their travel expenses:
[My client] paid to fly out for the festival, and had to wait for several hours in line, just like most everybody else in order to get in… We’re not seeking any relief with respect to the failure to get legendary Pokémon, because Niantic is offering that. But Niantic is not offering to refund people’s travel expenses for coming to Chicago. Most of the people came from out of state, many people from other countries — I talked to someone who flew in from Japan. – Zimmerman
Though Niantic has made several attempts to compensate the fest attendees, nothing seems to be working in company’s favour. Along with facing the embarrassing fest fiasco, Nianco will now be facing angry gamers and a lawsuit.
