Pokemon Home’s Furfrou problem makes the app useless

Early last year, The Pokemon Company dropped Pokemon Home and it became kind of great after a few updates. Eventually, the app was able to take all your Pokemon from the Pokemon Bank and store it on the cloud where it could then be transferred to your Switch. You could also take the majority of Pokemon from Pokemon GO and transfer them as well.

If you’re wondering why you encountered so many people with completed Pokedexes in Sword & Shield it’s because this made filling it really easy. For example, I had 47 slots open in my National Pokedex. Then I used Home to transfer ones from GO and then I did not. It’s a great app that makes transferring stuff easy.

Well, it was anyways.

Not long ago, back in September, Pokemon Home was updated to include the Pokemon Furfrou, the groom-able poodle. Furfrou was infamous for having ten different forms depending on how you styled its hair. It didn’t really change anything gameplay-wise though, just looked different. And when you did this in Pokemon X/Y after a few days, they’d change back to normal and you’d have to regroom it.

Therein lays the problem. When you transfer them to Pokemon Home, it just cuts the timer and sets your Furfrou back to normal. The only way to get around this is to transfer one of the new Furfrou’s from Pokemon GO that change form indefinitely.

So what’s the issue? The issue is that if you want any Pokemon you have to deal with the toxic people on Home because, like always, Pokemon players have found ways to ruin everything.

I have been looking for a shining Starly for days now. I tried using Home and lo-and-behold I found two shiny Starlys and a ton of regular Starlys. All of them are trades where they’re looking for Heart and Pharaoh form Furfrou.

And that is the problem.

The only way to get a Pharaoh form Furfrou is to evolve your Furfrou… when you’re physically in the country of Egypt. And as for the Heart form? It hasn’t been released yet. But Pokemon Home lets you set that as trade criteria.

Now, because of this, for the last month or so, if you look up anything on Pokemon Home, chances are it’s going to be a massive list of the one you’re looking for; but, only if you trade them with one of those forms. People have essentially done this only to ruin the app.

There’s somewhat of a catch in the fact that if you don’t have a Furfrou it won’t show you these unless you pick “show me people looking for Pokemon I don’t have.” But Furfrou wasn’t in any of the Pokemon games for the Nintendo Switch, meaning that if I don’t want these to show up I have to delete them and, as my three Furfrou are shinies, that is just not happening.

Even hopping over to Pokemon Home‘s app page lets you see the rapidly dipping rating as everyone begs The Pokemon Company to fix this. But in something that surprises no one, The Pokemon Company is not reading the comments. I’ve reached out to them for a statement and I’ll let you know but don’t hold your breath.

Hopefully, they fix the app in time for the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl games releasing next month but, again, don’t hold your breath.