The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Technical decision · 2017
Pokémon GO Fest 2017: 20,000 tickets sold, networks saturated, game unplayable
Niantic's sold-out 20,000-person festival collapsed as carrier networks saturated — full refunds, PokéCoins and a $1.575M settlement followed.
Niantic · 2017-07-22
What happened
Pokémon GO Fest, Niantic's first real-world ticketed event, filled Grant Park in Chicago on 22 July 2017: up to 20,000 people bought $20 tickets (about $25 with fees) that sold out in ten minutes and were scalped for up to $400. Players queued from 6am for the 10am opening — and from 6am the game would not let most of them in.
The carriers' networks could not carry the crowd. Login failures started hours before the gates opened and the game stayed mostly unplayable for the majority of attendees through the first hours of the festival, while chief executive John Hanke was booed on stage. Niantic blamed saturated AT&T, Sprint and Verizon networks — the carriers disputed that — and admitted to three problems: the networks, an iPhone crash bug and authentication failures.
Niantic responded with a full ticket refund, $100 of in-game PokéCoins and the legendary Lugia for every registered attendee, and extended the playable radius to two miles. A proposed class action over the travel costs the failed day caused settled for $1,575,000 in March 2018, covering airfare, hotels, parking and rental cars — with leftover funds going to two Chicago charities.
Why it happened
- A live event was planned for a mobile game without testing the one thing it depended on — the cellular networks under 20,000 simultaneous players in one park — so the product failed before it opened.
- The tickets sold as if the experience was the prize, but the network was a third party nobody had contracted or tested — leaving Niantic to answer for infrastructure it did not control.
- Refunds solved the ticket price but not the journey: the $1.575M settlement existed because attendees had flown and booked hotels for a day the game could not be played.
The lesson
Scale the infrastructure before the tickets: 20,000 players in one park saturated the carriers' networks, and refunds, compensation and a $1.575M settlement turned a marketing event into a liability.
Aftermath
The failed festival became the reference point for live mobile gaming events, and Niantic's compensation package — refund, PokéCoins, free Lugia, extended capture radius — was completed with a $1.575M class-action settlement in March 2018 that covered attendees' travel costs, with leftover funds going to two Chicago charities.
Sources
- The Verge, 25 July 2017 — I went to Pokémon Go Fest, and it was a disaster ($20 tickets, sold out, scalped to $400; login failures from 6am; game unplayable for most; three problems: carrier networks, iPhone crash bug, auth failures; Hanke booed; refund + $100 PokéCoins + Lugia; capture radius extended to 2 miles)
- The Guardian, 24 July 2017 — Pokémon Go fans enraged as first festival ends in connectivity disaster (full refund on the $20 ticket; Lugia compensation; Articuno released globally; players queued from 6am, four hours before opening)
- Chicago Tribune, 25 July 2017 — How did Pokemon Go Fest go wrong? (planned for as many as 20,000 people; original $20 tickets quickly sold out; complaints from 11am; carriers' rebuttals — Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T)
- TechCrunch, 30 March 2018 — Niantic to settle Pokémon GO Fest lawsuit for over $1.5M (estimated 20,000 attendees; $1,575,000 settlement covering airfare, hotels, parking, car rental, mileage, tolls; leftover funds to Illinois Bar Foundation and Chicago Run)
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