Last July, Niantic kicked off the first-ever Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago’s Grant Park—and things quickly spiraled out of control. Both cellular networks and the game's servers struggled to keep up with the intense demand of 20,000 attendees bunched up and frantically refreshing their phones, and Pokémon Go was nigh-unusable for most of the day.
In the end, Niantic refunded ticket costs, provided $100 worth of in-game coins to attendees, and then later agreed to a $1.575 million class action settlement to reimburse travel expenses.
