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.
If by “things like this” you mean poorly organized events, then yes, this is how we discourage companies from organizing an event like this unless they actually have done their homework properly.
Plenty of events like this get organized all around the world, go very well, and people are happy to return the following year. There’s not going to be a shortage of festivals, conventions, etc any time soon.
If these sort of lawsuits discourage the Fyre and Niantic people who have no clue as to what they’re doing, then great.
What entities in this case are trying to create value?
Sounds like the company did a "best effort" to make it work, then made reasonable attempts to make it right.
The way class action lawsuits work, the lawyers pushing it get a large percentage of the award - commonly 30% or more. Notice that the lawyer's bar association also stands to divide up any remaining money.
So the lawyers win. Consumers may break even. The company loses, and they probably would not have made a direct profit on the event in any case. Future consumers also lose because anyone who sees this result will hesitate to try again.
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.
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?
The cellular data connections? From all the mobile providers?
And it's not good enough to refund, but they have to PAY?
If your cellular connection goes down, do you get a refund? Do you sue? Is that really your relationship with your provider? And now somehow someone making a GAME is supposed to make that relationship BETTER? How exactly?
To expand, there's a common perception that in the United States people are constantly filing frivolous lawsuits, but this isn't the case. I think when people hear the results what happens after lawsuits against large companies, they hear them from the perspective of companies who are sued and have a vested interested in making the lawsuit seem "frivolous" in order to protect their reputation.
Anyone with experience in this world, how does a big company miss the boat so hard?
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.
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.
