[johnhenry]

A large company organized an event from which they profited. Due to negligence, they didn't fulfill their promises and people suffered financially. I don't understand your issue with suing them?

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.

[fma]

They didn't profit though... Tickets were refunded and customers got $100 to use in the game.

[Karunamon]

Tickets to the event? That’s all well and good, what about the travel to and from?

[fastball]

Niantic isn't a travel booking company... they weren't making money off of that, so why should they be at all liable for those kinds of costs?

I can't think of any situation where that makes sense. If I book a trip to a water park and book an outside hotel, and the water park shuts because of very bad weather, should they reimburse me for my hotel? Of course not! So why should Niantic do so?

[Karunamon]

The difference here is that weather is out of the organizer’s control, while this is pure negligence. If you host an event that never could have worked because you failed at really basic logistics like “can people get coverage here”, it makes sense to me that you get to cover travel costs that people wasted getting to your broken event.

[johnhenry]

They profited in that it was a publicity event for their product. It's naive to think that they didn't make money off these peoples' plight in some way.