Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images(CHICAGO) — It was supposed to be an all-day festival welcoming thousands of the world’s biggest Pokemon Go fans into Chicago, but technical glitches left attendees angry on Saturday, and without catching any rare Pokemon, leading organizers to offer refunds.
The trouble started when large crowds began to gather to get into Pokemon Go Fest in Grant Park’s Butler Field, causing the popular mobile app’s servers to crash. Frustrated, the fans chanted “fix the game” during game developer Niantic’s opening presentation and Niantic CEO John Hanke was booed when he took the stage, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Some Pokemon Go fans traveled from other countries to attend the event. Tickets were sold for $20, but the festival sold out in less than 10 minutes.
Niantic said it will refund the $20 ticket price and players or Pokemon “trainers” would be given $100 in PokeCoins for their Pokémon GO account.
“Today at Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago, technical issues created problems for a large number of players attending the event,” Niantic said in a statement according to ABC station WLS-TV. “From everyone at Niantic, we apologize to all of the Trainers who came out to Pokémon GO Fest today. Although we were able to solve many of the technical issues, we were not able to offer every attendee a great experience.”
Rob Schuyt of Minnesota told WLS-TV he spent hundreds of dollars for the event and thought Niantic “failed miserably.”
“They should have known you can’t have 20,000 people in a two-block area all trying to connect to LTE and their servers,” he said to WLS-TV. “It’s just nuts.”
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