Uh oh. What really happened in Chicago? A number of Pokemon Go Fest attendees are filing a lawsuit against Niantic Labs for the hassle the event caused them. As we all know, a lot of people went to the festival to celebrate the first anniversary of the popular augmented reality game. We’ve featured how tickets quickly sold out and how we were anticipating for the event. Even those people who weren’t able to go to the live event got excited because there were real-time events in-game activities planned. Unfortunately for some attendees, they were not able to enjoy the festivities because the game wasn’t working.
The class-action suit seeks for travel reimbursement because Niantic Labs has failed to launch the promised events and rare Pokemon as advertised. The game developer earlier gave some incentives like $100 credit for all visitors plus full refunds for the tickets but the group’s attorney, Thomas Zimmerman, said they are not enough because expenses to travel to Chicago were way bigger. There were attendees who came all the way from other countries and other states.
Niantic made a lot of promises and failed to keep them. It advertised many things so people got really excited about coming to the Pokemon Go fest. People spent money only to be disappointed. The attorney added, “The issue is, what was promised, what was the incentive that people relied on and the representations that people relied on to buy a ticket and make travel plans and fly to Chicago to participate in this festival, would they have done that had they known that that was not going to be lived up to and they weren’t going to get the experience that was represented?”
The game developer and event organizer Niantic said “Niantic does not comment on pending legal matters” when pressed for comments on the issue but it is postponing the Pokemon GO Safari Zone Events supposedly in Europe. The company published this official statement:
We’re guessing the Pokemon GO team doesn’t want a repeat of what happened and did not happen in Chicago. Let’s wait and see for further updates.
VIA: Polygon
SOURCE: Pokemon GO
