Sunday night, arguably the biggest night of SXSW, it rained — and everyone wanted a ride. And on cue, the apps failed. Overloaded with demand, Ride Austin and Fasten were essentially “bricked” — you either got stuck at a loading screen or the apps said there were no cars available — when there clearly were.
Riders were stuck, and drivers were circling the city with no way to get matched up with riders.In a post, Ride Austin said they were down sporadically from 7:15pm to midnight “due to a previously undiscovered database issue that did not emerge during scale testing.” And Fasten told a local Austin paper that the combination of rain and SXSW led to the app receiving “12 times as many ride requests as normal,” which is what led to them crashing.