TECH

Niantic CEO blames cellular data congestion for Pokémon Go Fest issues

Niantic CEO John Hanke, the man in charge of the mobile app maker behind Pokémon Go, reflected on the company’s rather disastrous real-world meet-up this past weekend, writing in a blog post published today that he and his team are sorry for the issues and taking the time to detail exactly what went wrong. According to Hanke, it was not so much the lack of preparation on Niantic’s part that plagued the very first Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago — though he readily admits to it being a learning experience — but an unforeseen level of cellular data congestion that overloaded mobile network providers and made the game unplayable for a vast number of attendees.

“Technical issues with our game software caused client crashes and interfered with gameplay for some users. The gameplay issue was resolved with a server configuration change and the crashes were also addressed for many but not all users,” Hanke writes. “A more protracted problem was caused by over-saturation of the mobile data networks of some network providers. This caused many attendees to be unable to access Pokémon Go or other Internet services. Network congestion also led to a login issue which affected some users able to access the Internet.”