Been trying to play Pokemon Go but servers has been down most of the weekend. I'm willing to wait till they get back up again but what I find strange is that this isn't the first time a game servers has been down before and they keep happening. Why is that?

Was it they didn't expect the demand to be so high? That doesn't makes sense since it god damn Pokemon!

Why weren't they prepare for it and is the way the game is structure that prevents them from learning from other game's server crashes?

Nothing you can really do when script kiddies want to DDOS you.

Are you aware that it is the most downloaded and played game ever created? Of course they didn't expect demand to be this high. Under the most optimistic of expectations, they wouldn't even guess it would've done half as good as it did. Also, no one can prepare for this. How do you prepare for being the biggest game ever? You can't, because nobody has been in this position before.

You might want to move this here: http://www.giantbomb.com/pokemon-go/3030-50840/forums/

And assuming that people learn from other people's mistakes is crazy.

It's a financial mistake for online games to go overboard on servers for their launch window. The amount of people who drop off any given game after the first month is always exponentially large, so if you spend money to accommodate those people with extra servers, after the first month those servers start being a negative purchase and you never re-coop that. It sucks because so many people want to play and get in while it's hot, but I don't blame them or any game developer that wants to take a conservative route with servers, especially when a lot of the people who put it down quickly after launch are the ones that won't spend any money on it.

Because owning, running, and maintaining servers during a game's launch is hard and that trying to gauge capacity (or estimate for it in a way that doesn't piss off higher ups) is even harder.

You can't really be prepared for this kind of server demand. You could overshoot your needs by double just to be sure you survive launch but then that means after launch you have a bunch of dead weight that sunk your budget and a bunch of pissed off businessmen. I feel like gamers are too quick to jump to the "if they were prepared for this" response without considering the requirements and limitations of the actual project. Not to mention no one in their right mind could have predicted the game being this busy. They're doing remarkably well for what they have going on right now.

Because everybody wants to play this garbage while its the hot shit for the next 2 weeks. Wait 2 weeks till you are the only person playing it, you will get in just fine.

@gaff: I wanted this topic to be general since I'm talking about all game servers. Pokemon Go was just a way to start it.

As someone who majored in computer networking for a time, this is the perspective that most people don't have or aren't interested in hearing. It would be a giant mistake for companies to ever attempt to bolster their servers for launch day/week/month demand because their load will never be anything near as great as it is during that time frame. This is why games launch with busted servers all the time and will continue to launch with busted servers for the foreseeable future.

To be fair, this weekend Pokemon Go has been getting DDoSed.

I don't know but obviously team rocket has something to do with it.

*thats all i remember about pokemon lol*

The initial release of Pokemon Go made it available in only 3 countries. On the 16th, Pokemon Go was released in 26 more countries, and overwhelmed the game to such an extent that the servers were constantly knocking players in and out, freezing mid-catching, messing up lure times, and so on. I've heard only a few people complain since then, but the game seems to be functioning for the most part.

Or, as @oursin_360 said, probably Team Rocket's doing. :)

@avenlaya: that'll learn people for... enjoying something...

I find that the servers get knocked out for me in the morning time.