
Niantic to settle Pokémon GO Fest lawsuit for over $1.5M - portofcall
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/niantic-to-settle-pokemon-go-fest-lawsuit-for-over-1-5m/
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VikingCoder
If you want to be sure people don't try to organize things like this in the
future, this is how you do it.

a) They already refunded all the money the received.

b) And now it's costing them even more money...

c) And a big portion of the problem was "Widespread cellular connectivity,"
which, yes, a sophisticated organizer can mitigate... But really, it's not
their fault. Users "BYOB" (Bring Your Own Bandwidth.)

So, it was supposed to be fun, and it turned into a liability instead. This
precedent makes it way less likely for people to ever want to do something
similar again.

They're paying $75 per person, because the people didn't get to play a game
when they got there.

Thanks, lawyers.

This is why we can't have nice things.

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make3
Niantic were 100% responsible of making sure the connections would work. They
are a large organisation and 100% should have hired technicians to test the
networks before organizing the event. That's basic due diligence.

That's like organizing an event on the roof of a building, but the roof wasn't
made to support so many people and it caves in during the event. Sure they
didn't build the building, but they still should've checked it could handle
their needs.

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bastawhiz
So where do we draw the line? If Niantic says "hang out on a boat and we'll
give you rare water pokémon" and players charter a boat and the boat sinks, is
it Niantic's fault? What if there's inclement weather that makes it impossible
to play in the area that some players are in? To what end should Niantic be
responsible for things that are prerequisite to using their service?

Let's say I held a picnic potluck that required you to bring some potato salad
to get in. The local Trader Joe's is out of potato salad, so lots of people
can't get in (despite there being other ways of procuring potato salad). Is it
my fault that I didn't coordinate with grocery stores to make sure there would
be enough?

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make3
Your first example isn't representative, unless Niantic organised the event in
a place where there was only one boat people could possibly rent for practical
reasons in the area. I would argue this makes it really stupid planning by
Niantic.

In your second example, if Trader Joe is the only potato shop remotely close,
then it was indeed also really stupid planning by Niantic

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Larrikin
It was poor planning and I assume dishonesty on the local organizers part. I
attend school a couple blocks from where Fest was held. Even by myself, I
almost always lose signal in the exact area where Fest was held. Its usually
not much of a big deal because I can walk for another block and get signal
back, but if you're having an event in that exact spot that require cell
signal, you're going to have a bad time.

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Improvotter
Why does everyone have to sue everyone else in the states? People mess up, get
over it. It wasn't wise to spend money on travelling in the first place imo.

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mLuby
If you don't actively defend your copyright, you can lose it. That might be
part of it.

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squam
How does copyright have anything to do with this class action lawsuit?

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duxup
The app was in such terrible shape at that point, both on the client side with
crashes and etc, and random login issues on the server side ... I can't
imagine how they thought they were going to pull that off.

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nikanj
They told the technical team in no unclear words that the event is happening
on these dates, and if the bugs are not fixed by then, heads are going to
roll.

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B1FF_PSUVM
Sticking _their_ (management) heads on pikes comes to mind ...

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Zeta_Function
How does something like this event happen? Pokémon Go was huge, and I’d just
expect that Niantic would have hired competent organizers. 20,000 pissed off
people has a huge negative word-of-mouth potential, and it’s not like they had
to have this thing in the first place.

Anyone with experience in this world, how does a big company miss the boat so
hard?

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bsder
Niantic is a Google spinout and basically suffers all the arrogance and
inertia that Google suffers from with none of the upside of being gigantic.

This is topped off with a technical staff that doesn't really have any
greybeards to hit people with a cluebat when necessary.

Finally, Niantic is privately held, so it's executive staff are not subject to
being fired after having repeatedly screwed up (Pokemon Go basically suffered
from all the same problems that Ingress suffered from only even moreso).

Put all that together and you have a perfect storm to create multiple, high-
visibility fuckups.

For a long time with Pokemon Go, I assumed that the problem was that Nintendo
put so many shackles on Niantic that Niantic really couldn't do anything. The
more I hear about Niantic, the less I believe that to be true, and the more I
believe that Niantic management are just idiots.

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watersb
Hmm. I know at least one of the Niantic technical staff, and is a very
competent, experienced software engineer.

Poor event planning, I can believe. Marketing promotions getting ahead of
infrastructure, I've been there.

But I know that a great gaming experience is very, very important to this
team...

I wish I could write this without sounding like astro-turfing. The Fest was a
horrible failure, burned the goodwill of exactly the fans that Niantic
treasured most.

Developers, marketing, executive staff should _all_ be required to use the
shitty bandwidth that everyone else has to live with.

~~~
tpetry
But its not the job of the software developers to research and plan the
wireless coverage of the location, its the job of the team planning the event.

Here in germany for big festivals every carrier places a truck with mounted
wireless antenas nearby the event location to ensure a good wireless coverage.
I dont know how it is in chicago, but for such an event the planners should
have asked the big providers if they can do something to not have wireless
outages. But maybe this would have costed them some money they wanted to
spare.

