Disastrous 'Pokemon Go' Event Leads To Mass Refunds (techcrunch.com)

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Disastrous 'Pokemon Go' Event Leads To Mass Refunds (techcrunch.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 23, 2017 @05:02AM from the didn't-catch-'em-all dept.

thegarbz writes: A Pokemon Go Fest hosted in Chicago and attended by between 15-20,000 people has ended in disaster. The event was plagued by logistical issues resulting in 3+ hour long delays getting into Chicago's Grant Park... Those people who were lucky enough to get into the paid event were greeted with a completely overloaded cell network unable to cope with the number of people trying to get online at the same time. The occasional person who was able to connect experienced a never ending string of game-breaking bugs when attempting to catch the rare Pokemon created specifically for this event.
Gaming company Niantic finally just gave a rare Pokemon Go character to everyone who attended -- though one attendee still called it a "horrible, terrible day." The Kansas City Star reported some people had paid as much as $400 for their tickets -- which had sold out within minutes -- and that some attendees had even started lining up for the event at 6 a.m.

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Capacity planning by djinn6 · 2017-07-23 05:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

You'd think after running into trouble with unexpectedly high volumes when they launched the game, they'd learn a thing or two about capacity planning. And in this case, they knew exactly how many people were coming and what they'll be doing once here.

I wouldn't ever go to a Pokemon Go event, but if I did, I'd be pissed too.
1. Re:Capacity planning by Dan+East · 2017-07-23 05:16 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yes, but they are a software company, not an ISP / cell carrier. They obviously did not consider the fact that the existing cellular networks could not handle that many customers in one small area accessing high bandwidth resources at the same time. Had they alerted the carriers, the carriers could have set up temporary mobile cells for the event, and / or Niantic could have set up their own free Wifi hotspots for the attendees.
  Either way, this was a very, very expensive way for them to learn about these kinds of connectivity logistics.
  
  --
  Better known as 318230.
2. Re:Capacity planning by known_coward_69 · 2017-07-23 05:17 · Score: 2
  
  Do EA or Activision care when they release new games and people can't connect to play? They just feed you some BS and wait it out until people go play the next big thing
3. Re:Capacity planning by adolf · 2017-07-23 05:20 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Are software companies somehow immune from hiring competent event planners?
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
4. Re:Capacity planning by whoever57 · 2017-07-23 05:37 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  In my humble opinion, they are a bunch of shits.
  I tried to help some nuns by getting Niantic to delist some Pokemon Go places on the convent's private grounds (at the request of the nuns).
  There was construction going on at the time. Despite uploading photos of the construction, showing that the area was dangerous, despite uploading photos of signs and fencing indicating that the area was private, Niantic would not remove the stops from the convent grounds.
  Anyone who gets hurt playing Pokemon Go should sue Niantic, because there is a likelihood that Niantic has already been told that the area is dangerous.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
5. Re: Capacity planning by Anonymous Coward · 2017-07-23 05:38 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Who cares what the cell companies do?
  Niantic should have set up a bunch of professional grade wifi networks, all tied to a fast fuckjng backbone. This was their event, and their event required a shit ton of network connections. Fix it with temporary wifi. It costs a shit lot less than like a hundred bucks a head to set that up.
6. Re:Capacity planning by Anonymous Coward · 2017-07-23 05:39 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The problem is us. We continue to pay for this shit. Companies release games that don't work and people continue to pre-order the things. If people would stop paying for these things, then they'd have to care about whether or not they work.
  But as long as people are willing to pay for games that don't work, companies will happily continue to provide games that don't work at premium prices.
7. Re:Capacity planning by JaredOfEuropa · 2017-07-23 05:51 · Score: 2
  
  We've had people walking along train tracks while hunting Pokemon. (The sign reads: "Sprinter to Hoofddorp is cancelled due to a Snorlax on the tracks"). After the railroad complained, Niantic did adjust their servers to exclude railroads, highways, major industrial areas and military installations.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
8. Re:Capacity planning by ShanghaiBill · 2017-07-23 06:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event, maybe 10-20% are on their cell at any time, mostly using low bandwidth voice and text. At this event, maybe 80-90% were trying to use the network, and at much higher bandwidths. The normal heuristics would not have worked.
9. Re:Capacity planning by r1348 · 2017-07-23 06:45 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  An experienced event planner would have known that.
10. Re:Capacity planning by GrumpySteen · 2017-07-23 07:10 · Score: 2
  
  They hired the guys who planned the Fyre Festival.
11. Re: Capacity planning by r1348 · 2017-07-23 10:58 · Score: 2
  
  LAN parties? Hackatons?
12. Re: Capacity planning by cfalcon · 2017-07-23 11:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No to both. A LAN party may have a bunch of gamers who have cell phones, but the focus is on the LAN. If the LAN is only part of the action- if teams are playing online- then you can be sure the planner will at least have a high speed connection available. Even a hackathon will focus more on local data transfer.
  This was truly unprecedented.
  And also completely, 100% percent, predictable.
  Again, in Pokemon Go, literally all you do is play on their server, through a cell network or a wifi.
  You can supply a fucking wifi. You can supply enough wifi. If this is your goal, you NEED to.
13. Re:Capacity planning by adolf · 2017-07-23 12:16 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Competent in...planning events?
  Events need to have things. Bathrooms, for instance: Someone needs to figure out how many porta johns to rent. Figuring out the quantity of things like is the job of an event planner.
  This event needed bandwidth and none was provided. That's a pretty gnarly failure, and being a "software company" instead of some other type of company does not excuse this guffaw.
  tl;dr, this is like organizing an Oktoberfest event and forgetting to bring beer.
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
14. Re:Capacity planning by GuB-42 · 2017-07-23 13:09 · Score: 2
  
  Poor network coverage is a very common theme at large scale events. As an attendee, this is something that I expect and I plan for it by having everything I need available offline and planning meetups the old fashioned way.
  Anyone who have already planned for large scale events should know that too and tackle the problem. This is simple incompetence, either from Niantic or from the event planners they hired.
15. Re:Capacity planning by Gussington · 2017-07-23 15:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event, maybe 10-20% are on their cell at any time, mostly using low bandwidth voice and text.
  What is this 2008? Anyone involved with any sort of event in the last 5 years knows that 99% of the crowd will be on Snapchat, FB, Twitter, Whatsapp, WeChat, Telegram, Viber, Maps, Uber etc It's all data these days, has been for years.
16. Re:Capacity planning by Gussington · 2017-07-23 15:13 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before
  Ok just stop. Have you heard of the Olympics, or any of the thousands of sporting or music events that happen every week somewhere in the world that have more than 20000 people all snapchatting, facebooking, twittering etc? I was doing this in 2010 and 3G (at the time) was on the same list as power, water, toilets and transport. This is a massive fail for a company that's primary product relies on a cellular network to function.
17. Re:Capacity planning by gl4ss · 2017-07-23 18:54 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The cell companies let anyone use their bandwidth and as everyone has a cell phone already, why should we need to pay for someone to tell us that our customers can get on line for free?????
  ..you only need to tell the cell companies. hell, you can even get them to sponsor and give _you_ strbaight up money.
  what you need to do is just tell them that on this day blabla at this place blabala there will be 30 000 people and they will cart some cell-in-box vans over. thats what they do for festivals etc all the time.
  what was more than likely was that the event was handled by some social media presentative/pr side of niantic who of course don't understand anything about technology
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
18. Re:Capacity planning by tlhIngan · 2017-07-23 19:04 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before, just how were a bunch of "competent event planners" (I hear that's a uni degree now) supposed to know the what they don't know without precedence?
  Practically every event ever nowadays. A stadium can hold 20,000+ people easily, and people love to tweet and snapchat and facebook and everything else. And there will be at least 10% of the people who are streaming video and audio commentary during the game, while everything else is bursty.
  In fact, we had several festivals already. Not big ones, but since it was aimed at the millennial crowd, there were CoWs (Cells on Wheels) set up around the perimeter. These CoWs are miniature cell towers meant to cover a small area that's likely to have a high density of cellphones. They typically backhaul onto either a dedicated link (if one was put in during construction - so sites like stadiums and arenas and parks will have them) or via a microwave link to a regular cell tower.
  All it takes is an event planner calling it in and the big carriers will truck in a CoW with advance notice and set it up. You tell them how many people are there and they'll estimate the number of units and type to bring in (they may bring in more than one and backhaul onto the one with a dedicated link).
  This is not new - it's been around a few years and you'll often see them at stadiums until they set up local repeaters inside.
19. Re:Capacity planning by cciRRus · 2017-07-23 21:07 · Score: 2
  
  VERY few players GPS spoof to get monsters. It's extremely rare, because your account can absolutely be banned for any type of spoofing. Many, many, accounts have been permanently shut down just for this. I'm sure you can find a spoofer one ownedcore who hasn't had any problems, but they are the exception, not the rule- and being a spoofer at all is very rare in this game anyway.
  I'm not sure how you derive that. I certainly can't say for all, but over at the gated parks in my area, which closes at night, you get crazy amount of activities at the 4 gyms everyday after midnight. The same for shopping malls that are closed everyday after 10pm. In one particular mall with at least 3 gyms, every late night, the gyms are alive with activities, with different teams taking over each gym very quickly, and each filling them up by 6 unique players.
  
  You cannot get caught by GPS spoofing if you play like a legit player. You use a legit device, and you don't appear miles away in the matter of seconds. I have been spoofing since the game was launched, and along with my friends, we were never caught or banned.
  
  --
  w00t
20. Re:Capacity planning by thegarbz · 2017-07-24 00:10 · Score: 2
  
  tl;dr, this is like organizing an Oktoberfest event and forgetting to bring beer.
  Nope. It's like organising Oktoberfest in a brewery and assuming the brewery will have beer.
  All the examples you gave are "standard" event management items. There's nothing "standard" about an event that is expected to have 20000 with active mobile connections. It's not something taught outside of IT, it's not something that is considered for any other event, it's not something that has been experienced in the past.
  It's easy to criticize the things you know. Not so much the things you don't.
21. Re:Capacity planning by drinkypoo · 2017-07-24 00:18 · Score: 2
  
  An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event,
  An experienced event planner would have seen atypical events, that's what makes experience valuable.
  An intelligent person would have asked cellphone companies to deploy temporary cells for the event, or even had some partner come in and blanket the park with free Wi-Fi. It could have been an opportunity. Instead, it was a disaster.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow by skam240 · 2017-07-23 05:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

Wow, I cant believe people still play Pokemon Go.

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1. Re:Wow by skam240 · 2017-07-23 09:50 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Because it was the ultimate fad game. When it first came out I'd see countless people walking around outside waving their phones around. A dozen or so restuarants in my area (and i live in the burbs) even gave discounts to various factions as a means of bringing in business. Fast forward to today and my teenage neice and nephew dont have a single friend who still plays and literally every person who i knew who played no longer does.
  
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2. Re:Wow by thegarbz · 2017-07-23 10:50 · Score: 2
  
  When it first came out I'd see countless people walking around outside waving their phones around.
  
  Of course. The initial start was an incredible fad. Now it just settled back down to the usual fan base who play the most popular current game in a 20 year old franchise. It has a healthy user base just like any other popular game on the market you don't see people play.
  
  Fast forward to today and my teenage neice and nephew dont have a single friend who still plays and literally every person who i knew who played no longer does.
  Congratulations. I also don't know anyone who plays WoW so that must not be a thing anymore either right?
  You should take public transport sometime. I see people literally everywhere, even when I was in the USA 3 weeks ago, so it's not just a EU thing.
There is another kind? by Zero__Kelvin · 2017-07-23 05:16 · Score: 2

Is a disastrous Pokemon Go event like a spherical basketball?

--
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Meaning of "disaster" by PopeRatzo · 2017-07-23 05:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'm very disappointed in this story. A flaming airship crashing into a crowd of 10,000 people is a disaster, not the failure to catch a rare pokemon.
To be honest, I was hoping for the former.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Re:Meaning of "disaster" by CanadianMacFan · 2017-07-23 08:55 · Score: 2
  
  Still not a disaster. Nobody died. Company won't go out of business because of this. And even if it did the company makes a game.
2. Re:Meaning of "disaster" by thegarbz · 2017-07-23 10:53 · Score: 2
  
  Thanks. I'm glad we got your clear definition of disaster meaning someone dies or an entire company goes out of business.
  Every other dictionary and definition in the world didn't make it clearly as black and white as you did. We have you to thank for clearing up the entire english language. I am in awe just to even be speaking to you.
Re:Sigh. by Scutter · 2017-07-23 05:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Must be pretty easy to see them all from your high horse.
How is this event any different from, say, Comic-Con or any other fan fest? Just because it's a video game you don't happen to like? Newsflash: People like enjoying their hobbies and sometimes that involves paying money to do things related to it.

--

"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Should we be surprised? by Herkum01 · 2017-07-23 05:52 · Score: 3

It is a cell phone based game. I play in the suburbs which has reasonable coverage, but I have period network issues with the game. There cannot be that many people in my area that are impacting the network so it has to be the game.
Add in REAL network congestion, of course this is going to be disaster. The part I don't believe is that people actually PAID to go to this!
Did they hire Ja Rule to run this or what?
Re:Sigh. by 0100010001010011 · 2017-07-23 05:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

Comic-Con or any other fan fest
Or professional sporting event, theater, concert, etc.
Re:Sigh. by thegarbz · 2017-07-23 06:06 · Score: 2

As opposed to what?
Thousands of people turning up to watch a group kick a ball around?
Thousands of people going to a shopping centre on sale day?
Frankly I'm more disappointed in the 100s of thousands of people who are vegetating in front of the TV or "disappointed" in their fellow people Slashdot.
Re:Duh? by Areyoukiddingme · 2017-07-23 09:02 · Score: 2

You can't do networking events at public parks because you can't add your own wireless infrastructure.
Rental of portable wifi access points specifically designed for events are available from half a dozen different vendors I found with a very cursory Google search. You most definitely can add your own wireless infrastructure, and I bet deployment happens in a matter of hours, just like the cellular tower trucks mentioned by the other poster. Might even be cheaper, given the phone company's penchant for overcharging for every byte.
Re:Sigh. by Gussington · 2017-07-23 15:19 · Score: 3, Funny

Must be pretty easy to see them all from your high horse.
How is this event any different from, say, Comic-Con or any other fan fest?
Nothing, they are all equally stupid. Now running around a field with a ball, that is the real deal...