Niantic settles Pokemon Go class action lawsuit for $1.5M

Niantic has reportedly settled a class action lawsuit over last year’s botched Pokemon Go Fest event with a payout of just over $1.5 million.

The whole affair is somewhat of a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when organizing massive community meet-ups like this, especially around a game that generated as much of a frenzy as Pokemon Go has. 

The event itself saw droves of avid Pokemon Go players descend upon Chicago’s Grant Park in hopes of nabbing rare Pokemon not usually found in the region. But instead, attendees were met with a myriad of technical issues that made the game unplayable.

In response to the initial problems, Niantic pledged to reimburse attendees the cost of their $25 tickets and give each an additional $100 of in-game currency for their troubles. 

However, many of the 20,000 attendees had paid for airfare, hotels, and other travel costs to attend the bungled event, which led to the formation of a class action lawsuit against Niantic to recoup the costs in the summer of 2017.

TechCrunch reports that the class action itself has now ended in a settlement, with Niantic agreeing to dole out a total of $1,575,000 to reimburse travel-related costs that attendees may have racked up during the event like airfare, hotel costs, up to two days of parking fees, car rental, mileage, and tolls.

Any money left from the settlement after the payout, lawyer fees, and other court-costs will then be donated to the Illinois Bar Foundation and the nonprofit organization Chicago Run. 

Court documents obtained by TechCrunch also note that more information on how attendees can claim their reimbursement, along with a website detailing settlement issues, should be online by May 25, 2018.