Niantic is getting sued because Pokemon Go Fest sucked so bad
Pokemon Go Fest happened last week in Chicago and in typical Pokemon Go fashion, nothing worked right for the entire weekend, resulting in frustrations all around. The servers were overloaded, which made it impossible to catch Pokemon during the event. The legendary Lugia raid that was supposed to happen was also affected.
Niantic has announced it will issue refunds to all attendees for their ticket prices and has also given everyone $100 worth of PokeCoins to spend in the game. However, some disgruntled attendees feel like the company didn’t go far enough in compensating players for their time and money wasted to attend the event.
At least two dozen people have filed a lawsuit against the company, retaining the services of Chicago attorney Thomas Zimmerman. Zimmerman said he was prompted into action by Jonathan Norton, a California native who traveled to Chicago to experience the event.
Zimmerman argues that his clients are all people who traveled a great distance to attend the event and because Niantic didn’t provide what was advertised, they deserve to have those funds reimbursed from the company.
“We’re not seeking any relief with respect to the failure to get legendary Pokémon, because Niantic is offering that,” he told us. “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 argues that these people wouldn’t have wasted their time and money on such an endeavor if they knew it wouldn’t live up to the expectations that Niantic set when they first advertised the event.
When asked for comment, Niantic refused by stating that don’t discuss legal matters.
[via: NintendoToday]