Last weekend, Niantic held a Pokemon GO Fest that promised attendees access to rare Pokemon. Unfortunately, server issues prevented attendees from getting their promised Pokemon, which resulted in an angry mass of festival attendees.
Niantic promised that all registered visitors would receive $100 PokéCoins, as well as full refunds for their festival tickets and the promised Pokemon. That wasn't enough for the attendees though. So, attendee Jonathan Norton, as well as about "20 or 30" other attendees have joined in a class action lawsuit against Niantic.
Attorney Thomas Zimmerman explained the reasoning behind Norton's lawsuit to Polygon, “He paid to fly out [to Chicago] for the festival, and had to wait for several hours in line, just like most everybody else in order to get in."
Zimmerman went on to detail what the enraged attendees were looking for with the case:
“We’re not seeking any relief with respect to the failure to get legendary Pokémon, because Niantic is offering tha. But Niantic is not offering to refund people’s travel expenses for coming to Chicago. Most of the people came from out of state, many people from other countries — I talked to someone who flew in from Japan.”
Basically, people want the money they spent on getting to the event back (note: Niantic issued refunds for the price of the event ticket).
“The issue is, what was promised, what was the incentive that people relied on and the representations that people relied on to buy a ticket and make travel plans and fly to Chicago to participate in this festival, would they have done that had they known that that was not going to be lived up to and they weren’t going to get the experience that was represented?” Zimmerman asked.
Niantic isn't offering a statement on the lawsuit.
