“Pokemon GO Fest” was supposed to be an event of fun and exciting things. It was also the day when Niantic would release the anticipated Legendary creatures. But alas, the event turned out to be a huge failure.
Most of the promised features in “Pokemon GO Fest” such as special raids did not happen. Why? Because the game was unplayable thanks to connectivity issues. Although the studio had played a huge role in this terrible experience, they also blamed the congestion of cellular data during that time. Here is everything about it in a nutshell.
Cellular data congestion happened
Supposedly, attendees in Chicago’s Grant Park were to capture pocket monsters, participate in raids, and even Lucky eggs. Unfortunately, they were not able to do any of these. According to The Verge, Niantic’s very own CEO John Hanke admitted that they were surprised with the level of cellular data congestion. This resulted to mobile providers being overloaded, making the game unplayable to almost everyone in the park. Hanke and his team tried to resolve the issue with the mobile networks, but it was just too late.
Moreover, the issue in “Pokemon GO Fest” had something to do with the studio’s very own servers. Hanke explained that there were “technical issues” with their game software, resulting in client crashes.
This eventually interfered the gameplay of the attendees, who were not even able to log into the game. Although the gameplay issue was said to have been resolved (thanks to a server configuration), it did not really do the trick. Most, if not all, of the players in Chicago were not able to play the game. There were just plenty of technical issues, most of which surprised the studio.
But for players, they believe that the studio could have prevented these if they were competent enough.
More events to be expected
Hanke, however, was positive despite the experience they had with “Pokemon GO Fest.” In fact, he revealed that the event ended with good numbers. For instance, there were around 69,000 raid battles recorded, while around 7.7 million of Pokemon were captured.
440,000 of these were said to be Legendary creatures in the form of Lugia and Articuno. The Niantic CEO iterated that they plan to release Moltres and Zapdos between the first and second week of August.
Hanke further revealed that events like “Pokemon GO Fest” will continue in other parts of the world. In fact, the next festival is set to be in Yokohama, Japan – the home of Pokemon. There will also be events deployed in countries located in Europe. He expects to announce the dates in the next few weeks or so.
