Ten years ago, “Pokémon Go” vice president of product Michael Steranka was crying in the shower because the first large-scale event for the hit mobile game was, in his own opinion, a disaster.
The Niantic-developed game kept crashing, too many people were trying to play at once and the servers couldn’t handle the game’s immense popularity.
But today, Steranka is all tired smiles after pulling off a 1,000-person “raid” event in New York City’s Times Square Thursday night to celebrate the first decade of the now-Scopely-owned “Pokémon Go.”
“A couple people joked with me that they hoped that I would go back to my hotel room and cry in the shower again last night, but this time happy cry,” Steranka tells Variety. “So yes, different vibes. It was magical.”
Carla Torres/AP Content Services for Scopely
