Dimension 20 opts out of controversial Ticketmaster pricing after ticket costs climb past $2k

polygon.com:

It seems like the perfect concept: Dimension 20’s Unsleeping City, an actual play Dungeons & Dragons campaign about the secret magical underbelly of New York City, played live in front of a paying audience at the Big Apple’s hall of halls, Madison Square Garden, for one epic night of adventure — an event dubbed “Gauntlet at the Garden.”

But maybe it’s just too perfect to exist in a world with Ticketmaster, as many prospective show-goers discovered this week when the conglomerate’s dynamic pricing kicked in, sending the cost of some single tickets skyrocketing past $2,000. The Dimension 20 crew and parent company Dropout issued a statement on Sunday, writing that they had requested that Ticketmaster cease dynamic pricing for Gauntlet tickets, and outlining measures to address fan frustration.

Here is confirmation of exactly what I was afraid of.

I entered yesterday 21 in the cue, in the first batch. Every ticket was available to me. Front row on the floor VIP was ~$250. They all disappeared immediately.

Those same seats back today at a staggering $2361.20 pic.twitter.com/chykGJZK9m

Ticketmaster, a company whose Wikipedia page has a “Criticism and controversies” section with no fewer than 13 sub-sections at the time of this writing and a “See also” section that includes the concept of monopoly itself, merged with events promoter Live Nation in 2010. Its dynamic pricing system employs an algorithm to raise prices on tickets for “Official Platinum Seats” in real time as demand for them rises (and lowers them when demand decreases) without a clear ceiling, resulting in ticket prices multiple times greater than prices set by the artist or performer.

In a statement shared on the Dimension 20 X and Instagram accounts, the Dimension 20 cast explained that dynamic pricing and platinum tickets “had not been something explained to us, nor something presented as something we had the ability to opt out of — once we had a better understanding of the situation as a group, we