Tons of Players Can’t Play Pokemon Go at Pokemon Go Fest

Thousands of players have flocked to Chicago’s Grant Park today for Pokemon Go Fest, Pokemon Go‘s first ever live event. There’s just one problem: many players are having trouble connecting to the game.

There are mass reports of players not being able to connect to Pokemon Go for more than a few seconds at a time. Since players outside of Chicago aren’t having any issues connecting to the game, the problem is likely due to players at the event overwhelming the event’s WiFi and local cellular traffic.

During his opening remarks for the festival, Niantic CEO John Hanke said that Pokemon Go was working with AT&T, Verizon, and other cell phone providers to boost coverage for the event. That didn’t prevent people for chanting “Fix the game” at Hanke while booing him over and over.

There was also this hilarious exchange, also captured on the game’s livestream:

That’s not the only problem plaguing the event. There are also massive lines to get into Pokemon Go Fest, even for players who had an “early access” pass to get into the event an hour early. Right now, it’s estimated that players at the end of the line won’t get into Pokemon Go Fest until 5 PM.

Given Pokemon Go‘s issue with server problems and bugs in the past, we shouldn’t be surprised that there were some hiccups with their first ever live event. Let’s hope these issues can get resolved soon so that players at the event can beat that upcoming Legendary Raid and unlock Legendary Pokemon for the rest of players.

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