Last month, we ran a story about a new exploit ruining competitive play in Pokémon Sword and Shield on the Nintendo Switch. It became such a “well-known bug” one video on Twitter demonstrating this nasty trick was viewed more than 50,000 times before it was removed.
The Pokémon Company caught onto this a week later and issued a stern warning to players who were deliberately disconnecting from online battles and tournaments to manipulate their record, and threatened to “permanently ban” them.
According to Pokemon-Matome, Japanese players who have been abusing this bug have now started to receive online bans. While these bans are believed to be permanent, The Pokémon Company said it was also open to temporary bans.
Here’s the exact warning issued in April:
We are able to confirm that a number of players have been disconnecting from the Internet to manipulate their win/loss records for online battles and tournaments.
From now on, if we determine that players abuse this bug for their own gain in online battles and tournaments, we will not hesitate to temporarily ban or even permanently ban players from accessing online play in Pokemon Sword and Shield.
So, if you’ve been abusing this bug online, you might want to stop before you are temporarily or even permanently banned from online play.
Leave a Reply