Pokémon GO traffic hit an unprecedented spike 50 times higher than expected. In Google Cloud's blog, engineering director Luke Stone posted a detailed description of the enormity of traffic brought by the hit game.
In a graph, Stone revealed that the actual traffic was 50 times past expected and ten times higher than the worst-case estimate. This caused game developer Niantic and Google to work together for a solution.
"Pokémon GO's popularity quickly surged player traffic to 50X the initial target, ten times the worst-case estimate. In response, Google CRE seamlessly provisioned extra capacity on behalf of Niantic to stay well ahead of their record-setting growth," Stone wrote.
Stone concluded his article by saying that Pokémon GO's game world uses over a dozen service across Google Cloud and that the game was the largest Kubernetes (open-source deployment for apps) project to date.
In plain English, Google had to upgrade its Cloud software to accommodate Pokémon GO's massive traffic. Aptly described as "swapping out the plane's engine in-flight", they were careful not to disrupt existing players while more people signed up for the game. Upgrades to Google's GKE (Google Container Engine) were also preformed before the app launched in Japan.
A few days after its launch, Pokémon GO users, referred to as trainers, reported problems with logging in and GPS signals dropping out. Some users get a screen that says the servers are currently down. Niantic responded by assuring trainers that they are working on fixing the issue. "We want you to know that we have been working crazy hours to keep the game running as we continue to launch globally. If you haven't heard us Tweeting much it's because we've been heads down working on the game. But we'll do our best going forward to keep you posted on what's going on," they posted in their Facebook page.
