Pokémon Go Fest.
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Niantic apologizes for technical issues at Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Niantic Labs apologized for the technical problems that players had at Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago on Saturday, and it will offer a full refund to those who attended.

As the company held a celebration event for the launch of its legendary Pokémon in the popular mobile game, a large number of players attending the event couldn’t play. It shows that staging live events for a lot of people in a single place isn’t that easy to do.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.