Pokemon Go Fest was last weekend in Chicago, and from most accounts it was a pretty big disaster for Pokemon Go. While the event was supposed to be a celebration of the game culminating in a massive Legendary Raid battle, long lines and poor network service prevented most attendees from enjoying the event. Niantic ended up refunding everyone’s money and gave attendees $100 in PokeCoins and a Lugia for their trouble, but a new report indicates the company isn’t entirely to blame for the new disaster.
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The Pokemon Go YouTube channel “Trainer Tips” recently released a recap of Pokemon Go Fest. Nick, the owner of the channel, was invited by Niantic to the event and was told to give his full and honest feedback about the event. While Nick didn’t shy away from pointing out Pokemon Go Fest’s flaws, he claimed that Niantic is being unfairly blamed for the poor network service plaguing the event.
“Niantic contacted all of the cellular network providers in Chicago ahead of time and told them ‘this is the traffic we’re expecting, this is the what we need you to be prepared for,’” Nick says in the video. “And all of the cell phone networks said ‘We can handle that.’” Nick also claims that Niantic requested portable cell towers at the event, but only Sprint provided them for the event.
As for his personal experience at the event, Nick (who has a T-Mobile account) said that he also experienced slow load time and errors, but that “it wasn’t horrible.” He does admit that players using other network providers found the game to be completely unplayable. Anecdotal reports state that AT&T users had the worst network errors of all the attendees at Pokemon Go Fest.
If Nick’s information is accurate, then it’s possible that Niantic isn’t entirely to blame for Pokemon Go Fest‘s failure. While Niantic probably could have done more to prepare for network issues, the report in the Trainers Tip video runs directly counter to the narrative that Niantic messed up once again.
Of course, Trainer Tips is officially sponsored by Niantic and Pokemon Go, so it’s possible that the channel is simply deflecting blame from its sponsor onto another company. But given the video’s stern rebuke of other aspects of the events, it seems like Nick at least believes the explanation he was told about the event’s network issues.
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