So Treasure Festa, a big resin kit convention in Japan (not Wonder Festival-sized, but still well-known), shifted to online events this year. Or perhaps I should say "attempted" to shift to online events, because they opened the first Treasure Festa Online to a massive shitstorm!
Treasure Festa and other events operate on the "one-day license" system, where amateur hobbyists can sell figures of copyrighted characters for reduced licensing fees thanks to contracts that stipulate the kits can be sold only on a certain day at a certain venue...
... this also means that these figure kits are inherently very limited, so the most popular stuff is in very high demand. Getting this stuff at an in-person event is a struggle. There's a reason events like Wonder Festival and Comiket are semi-jokingly referred to as "battles"
So an online event sounds nice -- no lining up for hours only to be disappointed! No need to travel to Tokyo! Buy everything you want at once!
Unfortunately, it seems Treasure Festa anticipated online participation would be similar to an in-person event. OOPSIES.
Anyone who has run a livestream of a decently popular event will tell you that the number of online viewers is MUCH higher than the number of in-person attendees. Treasure Festa Online tried to restrict this by selling virtual "event tickets" to access the online event. It failed
Compared to their in-person events, almost *five times* as many tickets were sold. Certainly this would indicate they needed to scale up their servers!
Unfortunately, since these online tickets went on sale mere days before the event, they couldn't respond quickly.
The result was a clusterfuck. Gates opened at 11 AM JST to immediate chaos. People fighting 502 and 504 errors just to log in. Dealers unable to check and update their offerings. Everybody freaking out over some of the hot items (mostly FGO and Hololive figures) selling out.
People who could get in would have their carts timeout thanks to constant page errors. Others who completed purchases got no confirmation or double-charges. At about 1 PM the servers went down for maintenance, promising to return at 2:30 PM.
They never did.
So, Treasure Festa is hitting the reset button. They're going to try the online event again in about a month, supposedly. They've indicated that purchases will be voided, but also said something about making sure people who did complete purchases will get stuff? *shrug*
It's worth nothing that there was almost no official communication until like 6 PM JST, too. Most everyone is pissed, because a. any idiot could have told you the demand would be huge and b. shit was going down and you said nothing and are still being ambiguous
Takeaway: how in the hell do you plan an online otaku event with high-demand, limited-edition stuff and NOT expect to get hammered, nerds are the masters of tenacity and consumerism
See you in a month I guess
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