Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl dupe glitches are worrisome for Pokemon’s future

I know, I know, this is coming from the guy who gave Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl a 6.5 out of 10. I promise this has nothing to do with the way I feel about the game’s graphics, gameplay, or mechanics. This is a lot more potentially boring than that as it deals with coding issues.

See, even though Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl has patched out a lot of the duplication cheats that existed, new ones keep getting discovered. In fact, one of the most recent ones allows you to duplicate an entire box worth of Pokemon along with whatever item they’re holding. When this game is finally connected to Pokemon Home next year, these glitch-enthusiasts are going to be giving out Jerachi and Manaphy like Oprah has put them under everyone’s seat.

And that does kind of suck. I like the fact that Jirachi and Manaphy were the last two Pokemon that were somewhat hard to find. It made them feel special even if their stats didn’t. It also makes shinies a little special as people who have found shinies can easier convert them into a full box of shinies. But again, that’s not my main reason for thinking about this the way I do.

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were developed by a studio called ILCA, which, despite how the games look, stands for “I Love Computer Art”. They’ve done some backup work for other games in the past, but this is one of their first projects that’s just them. And normally I can be pretty forgiving if a company kind of drops the ball on one of their first attempts at a big game. But here’s the thing, ILCA is also responsible for something else — Pokemon Home.

Pokemon Home is a paid service that allows players to move their Pokemon from one game to another. It also allows trading and things of that sort. For example, I love Pokemon Home because it’s WAY easier to catch shinies in Pokemon Go than it is in the regular games and Pokemon Home allows me to transfer those shinies into my mainline games so I can go through the main story with a full party of shinies at my side like the fancy boy I am.

But recently I’ve talked about the fact that ILCA has completely dropped the ball with Pokemon Home as the trading function is all but useless because of something that could easily be patched out. ILCA just won’t. They just don’t touch it or update it. But a lot of people use this to store their Pokemon. Storing on there allows people to restart their Pokemon game and play through the main campaign again without fear of losing everything. But also, some of these Pokemon have been around for a long time.

See, ever since Ruby and Diamond in 2002, you’ve been able to trade your Pokemon to the next generation of games. And I’ve been playing Pokemon longer than that. As such, I have some Pokemon I’ve kept with me from game to game for almost twenty years. I have Pokemon that have been “alive” longer than many legal adults.

Now the safety and well-being of these Pokemon are up to ILCA, a company that currently has a terrible track record for safe coding, meaning it’s possible that any day now someone could discover an exploit and just trash ILCA’s systems. The special Jirachi I got from owning the Pokemon Colosseum Bonus Disc that I’ve transferred from generation to generation could be gone just like that.

It seems weird with how much work Nintendo and Game Freak are doing to try and expand the Pokemon universe, they’re leaving the data storage to a company that seems to not be up to snuff with their coding abilities.

Maybe I’m just being over the top but it feels like with Pokemon Home’s trading system being a damn nightmare since the September Furfrou event and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl being a duplication printing press for legendaries, shinies, and master balls, it just feels like Pokemon deserves better.