Opinion: Cheating in Competitive Pokémon should be a thing of the past

As you may have heard, several competitors at the recent 2023 Pokémon World Championships were disqualified due to using hacked Pokémon. The logical question to then ask is: why? Much like in regular sports, we see cheating happen among top players who clearly already have the skills required to win - surely they wouldn't need to cheat, right? For Pokémon, though, the cheating is not compensating for lack of skill, but for lack of time, and this is an issue the series has faced for a while.

Just to get everyone caught up: an individual Pokémon has several traits that can affect its battle performance, with some of those traits being unchangeable, and some being changeable but with varying degrees of difficulty. In a competitive environment, generally the most important things are the Pokémon's Individual Values (IVs)s, Effort Values (EVs), Ability (often Hidden Ability), Nature, and Moves (often Egg Moves or Event-exclusive Moves).

From generation III to about generation V, with a Pokémon you already have on hand, you could only change their EVs and moves (but not if they're Egg Moves or Event Moves) - the other traits would require you to obtain a new individual Pokémon, which was often done through breeding. Getting the traits you wanted from breeding would require wrestling with the game's psudeorandom-number generation to bless you with your target. That could take hundreds-to-thousands of eggs, effectively tens-to-hundreds of hours, just to assemble the 6 Pokémon needed for a team. While some skill is needed to figure out what stats, moves, etc. your team should have, actually getting Pokémon with your desired traits is simply a massive time sink of rolling the dice over and over.

In the case of Pokémon with event-exclusive moves or abilities, you'd need to find someone willing to trade one to you, or be lucky enough to have your own from the event. If the Event Pokémon in question is from a very old event, this causes another issue of long-time players having a grandfathering advantage.

From this, we can see a motive for creating idealized Pokémon through hacks - these players know how to battle, they know what strategies are effective and counter each other, they know how to read their opponents and respond accordingly. But they simply don't have the hundreds of hours needed to sink into making a team. Perhaps we should sympathize with the cheating, then?

There's another side to this however. Pokémon’s game releases over time have steadily added ways to change a Pokémon’s traits more easily, and generations VIII and IX have made almost all of the unchangeable traits changeable without having to hatch or catch a fresh new Pokémon. IVs? Use Bottle Caps and your IVs are maxed. Ability? Change it with an Ability Capsule for a standard ability, or an Ability Patch for a hidden ability. Nature? Change it with a Mint. Egg Moves? Teach 'em with a Mirror Herb in a picnic, no breeding needed. Event-locked moves? They're out - Sword & Shield require that you wipe 'em for the Pokémon to participate in competitions, while HOME automatically wipes 'em if you transfer to any other game from Generation VIII onwards.

Now, you do still need to grind things like Pokémon Dollars and Tera Raid Battles to get the materials for some of these changes - but that ends up taking much less time than biking in circles to hatch hundreds or thousands of eggs. So then, is cheating really justified to "skip the grind" when doing it legit is now easier and faster than it ever has been?

For this one Bulbapedia editor's take: The obstacles to competitive play in older generations were, frankly, awful. But I really have to commend Pokémon for steadily breaking down those barriers, even though it's taken them a while to do so. The old system of mass-breeding was really not fun to do, and meant that the Pokémon you actually adventured with had no chance of being remotely useful in competitive play - but now, if you're so inclined, they can be. I feel that fits better with the spirit of camaraderie that Pokémon has tried to be about since the beginning.

Pokémon clearly doesn't want people to cheat, and they've extended an olive branch by making it significantly easier to do things legit. Why not return the favor and play by the rules? It can't be as hard as it used to be.

 

I would argue that the games have made making competitive Pokémon too easy, but that simply makes your point more valid. Spinning up six perfect competitive ‘mons might take a couple hours once you’ve amassed the necessary materials, all of which are handed out like candy IMO.

 

What really surprised me the most about these disqualifications was that they couldn't prove that the Pokémon these contestants were using were bred from a 6 31 IV Ditto that was either modded or hacked due to how super rare they are to get a hold of let alone the fact that there's no real way to trace the data of the offspring back to the 6 31 IV Ditto because Nintendo / Game Freak never coded the Mainline games in a way where it was possible.

People who mod and hack their own Pokémon are sophisticated enough nowadays to where they've found loop holes to bypass the security checks of Pokémon Bank on the Nintendo 3DS and Pokémon HOME on the Nintendo Switch for being able to detect Pokémon that are modded or hacked to where it's almost impossible to tell If a certain Pokémon is legitimate and the sad part is that most competitive Pokémon are 99% illegal because of Ditto.

 

I would argue that the games have made making competitive Pokémon too easy, but that simply makes your point more valid. Spinning up six perfect competitive ‘mons might take a couple hours once you’ve amassed the necessary materials, all of which are handed out like candy IMO.

This is massively divorced from the reality of what is required to build a team. Im a blisy just did a YouTube video outlining the process for a player to legitimately obtain a competitively viable team for the current meta. From beginning to end, the process took over 17 and a half hours. In addition, there is the barrier to entry of cost, requiring at absolute minimum 2 games, more realistically 3, with the additional requirement to buy DLC to the tune of $210 total.

This is an obscene barrier to entry for new players. I don't know how someone could possibly justify this as a reasonable expectation, especially when it would be trivial for GF to implement a system where teams could be crafted a la Showdown for battle without compromising the functioning of the main game, such as for example making the mons created only available in rental capacity, therefore not accessible outside of PvP.

It is a conscious choice that GF are making to maintain these obstacles, and it should not be a shock that genning teams is still rife.

 

I saw a funny video the other day that defended the cheating by saying "It's part of the culture, everyone does it!" Which is so funny an excuse I'm not even going to comment further. Jokes are too easy to make.

This is massively divorced from the reality of what is required to build a team. Im a blisy just did a YouTube video outlining the process for a player to legitimately obtain a competitively viable team for the current meta. From beginning to end, the process took over 17 and a half hours. In addition, there is the barrier to entry of cost, requiring at absolute minimum 2 games, more realistically 3, with the additional requirement to buy DLC to the tune of $210 total.

Not buying this, either. If you can afford the travel expenses, and you do need them, you can afford this. Same for the the time required. the same video said "That could be time better spent practicing!

It used to be somewhat excusable. But at this point, the only things not available to get relatively easily are old event moves (yeeted may be coming back anyway), 0IVs, and tera types (shard grinding is a pain).

Though if GF was really serious about this, they'd C&D the PkHeX guys. Who repeatedly say not to use their tool to cheat, and wow, big surprise when people use it to cheat. Though they even routinely do checks even more thorough than Nintendo for the official tournaments and expose them to similar excuses. I remember them saying that 7/8 of the top eight used modified data that they found and Nintendo didn't. Probably did it again, but I can't find it.

Basically, I guess what I'm saying is: do at your own risk, be smart about using it, excuses are funny, the ease of Showdown and such probably made this happen, and it'd be even funnier than a C&D (which would just make someone else make one anyway) if they hired the PkHeX guys for checks. I'm already enjoying people throwing fits from a couple people getting bopped from what was apparently a faulty tradebot (according to one source), now imagine how much worse it'd be if over half of them got thrown out.

EDIT: Found the hot stats, this is from VGC rental teams that were uploaded:

 

You can buy whatever you like. The fact of the matter is that this is a billion dollar company that is making a conscious choice to not make their competitive scene accessible. They're not some indie startup, they have the money and manpower to remove this issue entirely, but they are actively choosing to kneecap their competitive scene with mechanics designed for solo play.

The time to legally obtain a team could indeed be better spent practicing, but GF /TPCi are happy to make people waste that time on pointless grinding for moves, items, or any IV stat that isn't 31. I don't take your point about the money, because they are choosing to extort their players instead of giving them access to the tools to compete competitively in a reasonable way. I won't shed a tear for poor GF or TPCi for not getting the extra money for games that they could sell anyways without creating a pay to win competitive environment.

I agree with you about the PkHex guys, and even Smogon and the Showdown people. They have people in their community who give a shit enough to do things that they can't be arsed to do themselves to help promote a better and more open competitive environment. They could buy all the code, the devs, the mods and their moms 4 times over if they cared enough about it.

We have a passionate fanbase for playing our games competitively, to the point that they are creating better, more flexible and accessible tools and environments than we are? That's probably not insight or vision we could use to improve our overall offering to Pokemon fans, maybe to even grow our organized events attendance. Nah, we're fine as we are.

I don't know why people are so willing to swallow whatever the corporate people decide is reasonable, when it is so obviously a self-imposed restriction, not a limitation of technology or money.

 

Am I the only one here that finds breeding Competitive Pokémon with a 6 31 IV Ditto that was arguably created from an external device outside the official Mainline games to be grounds for cheating in these events? Nintendo / Game Freak could EASILY fix this problem by coding the official Mainline games to where the offspring are actually traced back to a 6 31 IV Ditto to determine whether or not If they're hacked.

What do we get instead? A memory check so vague that it doesn't really tell us anything about whether or not If the Pokémon whose memory was checked was indeed hacked. There's a very good possibility that the majority of those VGC contestants that didn't get disqualified were running Pokémon that are hacked because they were bred from an artificially created Ditto that was never actually caught from someone in the official games.

 

I don't know why people are so willing to swallow whatever the corporate people decide is reasonable, when it is so obviously a self-imposed restriction, not a limitation of technology or money.

The competitive scene has been spoiled by simulators, really. It's kinda sad seeing people act like it's their right to gen Pokemon, then freak and vehemently defend themselves when they get caught. I mean, the fact that you joined the forums just to reply to this article is proof right there!

That said, I don't necessarily disagree with some of your points. I even mentioned there's room for even further improvements, and for example, I absolutely wouldn't have blamed anyone for Hidden Power hacking before that move got Thanos'd. But the fact of the matter is, people will still gen no matter how easy Nintendo makes it to build Pokemon aside from literally letting you put in what you want Showdown style. It's a matter of wanting for as little effort as possible with those types.

 

You've got me wrong. I've never played VGC, not competed in a sanctioned event, let alone hacked a mon for one. My frustration comes from being one of those people who would be inclined to get involved, but that I'm expected to waste literal days of pointless and mindless activities to play. Not to get better, not to rise up ranks, or qualify for prestigious tournaments. Literal days of pointless actions to even begin to play.

A battle simulator never used to be such an anathema, they even used to sell them. All they'd have to do is tack on a team builder and you'd have something to go with. They could even lock away superficial features like shinies, marks, ribbons etc, leave those only accessible if a mon is obtained in the standard way in the main games.

This isn't about a right to hack. GF / TPCi can do whatever it wants with its games and events, and people should abide by those rules. But it has to take its share of the responsibility when it comes to why hacking is so prevelant. They have the time, money and technology to provide solutions, but they have made conscious choices over decades to maintain obstacles for players, both in terms of time and money. Hacking is the result of their choices to not provide those options. People want to play their games, why the hell are they choosing to make it so damn difficult to begin to do so?

 

The fact of the matter is that all sports have barriers to entry at the professional level, in terms of both time and money. eSports aren't exempt from that. Sure, there's plenty of sports where the initial equipment costs may be small, such as Soccer, which you can play with a cheap ball, and goalmouths marked by whatever you've got lying around. But to take the game beyond that will always require an outlay for equipment, and an investment in training for self-improvement. So in that sense, the time spent training your Pokémon is functionally equivalent to the time a Soccer player might spend in the gym, whereas the time spent playing practice battles against other trainers is more equivalent to a Soccer player training their ball handling skills.

Or to put things another way.... the equivalent of genning in a physical sports contest is steroids, and other performance enhancing drugs, supplements, etc.

It needs to be acknowledged also that genning itself is an expression of privilege. It requires people to have the appropriate hardware (not every family can afford a computer, and if they do have one it may well be out of date), and subscriptions (a good internet connection and NSO isn't exactly cheap for a lot of people), as well as a certain level of technical proficiency to hack your Switch and use the software. Or, bypassing that, enough money that you can simply pay someone else to gen for you. This is another area in which genning is a good analogue to performancing enhancing drugs, supplements, etc. Even when you have something that's legal, like the use of blood transfusions for doping in pro cycling, this is not something that your average athlete is going to have access to. It's only once they get to the point of joining a professional team that they're likely to have the support in terms of a dedicated medical team to be able to do this.

Genning is cheating. Allowing genning merely gives the already privileged even more privilege. It doesn't open up the game to more people, it just closes it off further.

 

Genning is cheating. At no point have I stated otherwise, so we can quit wasting our typing fingers on that particular point, if we don't mind. GF / TPCi have rules against it, and they are allowed to have and enforce those rules. With this said, I'm not even going to gratify the PEDs analogy with a response, since it has literally no bearing in what I've been saying this entire time.

All eSports do indeed have barriers to entry. Access to appropriate equipment is one of them, whether to buy the computer, the game, an internet connection etc. What GF / TPCi have done though, that most other companies do not do when building a game that is used for eSports, is that they have artificially created additional barriers through the division of certain assets required to compete between different products or locked access to them behind hours and days of labour.

Once again, I am not talking about development of skills or abilities, I'm talking about literally to even start competing in the first place. No other game does this. Mobas don't do this, shooters don't do this, sports games don't do this, fighting games don't do this. You buy the game, you get the pieces required. The most you might need to do is unlock bits through regular play, thereby improving your general foundational skills (reflexes, game theory, strategy etc) in the process of getting access to your game piece. Also, once you have your game piece, you're not potentially required to commit hours of additional work should you need to adjust that game piece in any way.

That's not how it is in Pokemon. In Pokemon, you have that work every time you make a team. It's not a one off time investment. The skills you use to build the team are also completely and totally unrelated to the skills you use when battling. My ability to strategize in VGC is not enhanced by my hours spent grinding Tera Raids. Quite the opposite in fact. I'm wasting time on mindless activities that do not contribute in any way to my success as a player, other than through overcoming the artificial access barriers to a game piece.

GF / TPCi have created a perverse incentive for people to gen. The technology exists for them to circumvent the issue, they've already used a lot of it over the decades, like battle simulators and rental teams. The point is that despite decades of competitive play where this problem has existed, GF / TPCi have made minimal effort to solve the problem. They most they have done is to make access to some of the parts required to make teams easier to access, but the end result is still hours and days of mindless effort that doesn't in anyway improve your ability to compete. At the end of the day in VGC, a genned mon is functionally identical to a legitimately obtained one.

GF / TPCi have the money, time and technology to fix this problem once and for all. They have made the conscious choice to not do so. For money, because they're lazy, or they don't care, it doesn't matter. They have chosen not to. If they wanted to, they could develop another battle simulator, they could develop a team builder that is better than anything Showdown or PkHex has to offer. They could improve access to, and thereby open up their competitive community to a wider audience. They are choosing not to do that, and as such, they are creating the incentive for the rule breaking that has been present from Journey Across America through to S/V VGC. I will not run interference for a billon dollar company who has consistently made business decisions to allow this cheating to go on for decades without using their boundless resources to fix it once and for all

Edit: typos

 

It needs to be acknowledged also that genning itself is an expression of privilege. It requires people to have the appropriate hardware (not every family can afford a computer, and if they do have one it may well be out of date), and subscriptions (a good internet connection and NSO isn't exactly cheap for a lot of people), as well as a certain level of technical proficiency to hack your Switch and use the software. Or, bypassing that, enough money that you can simply pay someone else to gen for you.

London - Honolulu flight price : 1269€
VGCs don't even need genning to be discriminatory... It's not an expression of privilege at this point.

 

So every Competitive Pokémon is basically genned minus caught Legendaries and the people running the VGC event for 2023 Pokémon Worlds didn't even bother to disqualify the rest of the contestants there but ONLY performed a hack check toward the contestants who made top cut. To make it even worse even the 2023 VGC Champion himself openly admitted to using genned Pokémon just to protest against Pokémon Company International and Game Freak:

 

What GF / TPCi have done though, that most other companies do not do when building a game that is used for eSports, is that they have artificially created additional barriers through the division of certain assets required to compete between different products or locked access to them behind hours and days of labour.

Once again, I am not talking about development of skills or abilities, I'm talking about literally to even start competing in the first place. No other game does this. Mobas don't do this, shooters don't do this, sports games don't do this, fighting games don't do this. You buy the game, you get the pieces required. The most you might need to do is unlock bits through regular play, thereby improving your general foundational skills (reflexes, game theory, strategy etc) in the process of getting access to your game piece. Also, once you have your game piece, you're not potentially required to commit hours of additional work should you need to adjust that game piece in any way.

That's not how it is in Pokemon. In Pokemon, you have that work every time you make a team. It's not a one off time investment. The skills you use to build the team are also completely and totally unrelated to the skills you use when battling. My ability to strategize in VGC is not enhanced by my hours spent grinding Tera Raids. Quite the opposite in fact. I'm wasting time on mindless activities that do not contribute in any way to my success as a player, other than through overcoming the artificial access barriers to a game piece.

I think you're rather off base here.

First off, physical equipment is never a one-off investment. Not for physical sports, and not for video games. Equipment can and does wear out over time, requiring constant replacement. The higher the level you're playing at, the more frequently you're replacing your equipment. Pokémon may well have less investments required than many other games here. Sure, you have to buy the console and the games, but the existance of trading does mean that you might not necessarily have to buy every single game (just so long as you do have a copy of whatever main series game is required for current battles), and it's hardly like you're going to wear your controller out like a Smash Bros player does.

Secondly, equating your Pokémon to game pieces or other equipment isn't the right way to look at them. The physical equipment here is your game console, and your games. But at no point do you actually buy the individual Pokémon that you catch themselves, you've only paid for the ability to catch them. A much better analogy is to equate the Pokémon to your physique. In much the same way a physical sports start has to develop their physique through dedicated use of equipment they have been purchased, so too does a Pokémon player earn their Pokémon team through dedicated use of the console and games that they've purchased. Similarly, buying the equipment does not and has never guarenteed a person that they will have a suitable physique to compete, players still need to earn that through hard work using that equipment.

Finally, I think you're failing to recognise the difference between starting playing, and starting competing. Anyone can play soccer with a ball and some space to mark out a field and goals. But someone playing on a competive level is going to need to develop a sufficient physique to play on that level. This example 100% applies to other eSports as well. It's true that anyone can pick up a controller and play game, but playing and competing are two very different things. eSports athletes in MOBAs, shooting games, fighting games, etc, absolutely do spend time in developing their reflexes, their stamina, and so forth. Regular play has never been sufficient on its own to reach a truly competitive level.

GF / TPCi have created a perverse incentive for people to gen. The technology exists for them to circumvent the issue, they've already used a lot of it over the decades, like battle simulators and rental teams. The point is that despite decades of competitive play where this problem has existed, GF / TPCi have made minimal effort to solve the problem. They most they have done is to make access to some of the parts required to make teams easier to access, but the end result is still hours and days of mindless effort that doesn't in anyway improve your ability to compete. At the end of the day in VGC, a genned mon is functionally identical to a legitimately obtained one.

GF / TPCi have the money, time and technology to fix this problem once and for all. They have made the conscious choice to not do so. For money, because they're lazy, or they don't care, it doesn't matter. They have chosen not to. If they wanted to, they could develop another battle simulator, they could develop a team builder that is better than anything Showdown or PkHex has to offer. They could improve access to, and thereby open up their competitive community to a wider audience. They are choosing not to do that, and as such, they are creating the incentive for the rule breaking that has been present from Journey Across America through to S/V VGC. I will not run interference for a billon dollar company who has consistently made business decisions to allow this cheating to go on for decades without using their boundless resources to fix it once and for all

The latest Pokémon main series games have made huge strides in reducing the amount of time and effort players need to put into training their Pokémon for competition. We can quibble about if they've done enough there, but that's an entirely different discussion. If you want to position that as mindless effort, well... that's clearly not true, since you do still need to plan out how you would go about training your Pokémon, in the same way that a physical athlete is going to plan out their exercise plan so they can have the appropriate physique for their sport of choice.

As we've both agreed, genning is cheating. Games companies absolutely can and should do more to curb cheating, but let's be realistic here. Cheating exists in every sport. There would be cheating in some form no matter how much they might try to crack down, just as there is in so many physical sports today, and there would exist incentives to cheat regardless of how the sport was structured. Ultimately, the decision to cheat is one made by the individual player. "I had an incentive to cheat" is not and should never be an excuse for that.

London - Honolulu flight price : 1269€
VGCs don't need genning to be discriminatory

Oh, 100%. Genning isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Most of the people playing Pokémon on a competitive level, regardless of if that's VGC, TCG, or even Pokémon GO, are already privileged. They're lucky enough to be working jobs that actually allow them to have sufficient time to practice and battle constantly, and to take time-off whenever they need to go somewhere for a tournament, and then the costs for those trips as you've noted. Sure there's travel awards for winning certain tournaments, but there's a shocking number of players who fly all around the world to go to Regional and International Championships, not just the World Championships. Going to so many physical tournaments is simply not realistic for the vast majority of players.

 

Also I don't see why it would be so hard for Nintendo / Game Freak to actually develop an official Genning App for Pokémon HOME to help determine If a Pokémon is Genned or not and If it is then the software would tell you to release the Pokémon as you would normally release a Pokémon in your PC Box. If Pokémon HOME can have a feature that forces you to remove specific moves on your Pokémon after being transferred from previous games then why can't they do the same for Genned Pokémon? Makes absolute no sense whatsoever.

Nintendo / Game Freak NEEDS to make 6 31 IV Ditto's more accessible without having to Gen for it NOT by making it extremely rare via a 6 star Tera Raid in Scarlet & Violet or at least make it a Mystery Gift Event which I'm REALLY surprised they haven't actually done yet and you'd have more people flooding their local GameStop just to get a free code to download a legit 6 31 IV Ditto that isn't Genned and can breed legitimate Pokémon without worry of feeling guilty of cheating at VGC because the Pokémon they bred came from a Pokémon that wasn't Genned.

 

You're splitting hairs here now, and frankly it's getting a little exhausting. Of course physical equipment needs upkeep, maintenance, and may indeed need replacing due to wear and tear or an increase in specificity for the task it is being used for. When I said one off investment, I was referring to the work required to get access to Pokemon to play. We're literally sitting here talking about competitive play generally and VGC specifically, and what it takes to get involved. So I think rather than a mistake on my part between playing and competing, I think the mistake is with you where you think we're talking about just playing a Pokemon game, and we're talking about competing in a Pokemon tournament.

And I'm sorry, Pokemon for your competitive team are game pieces. Pokemon is a turn based RPG, and the mons you use are pieces. Like cards in a deck builder, guns in a shooter, champions in a moba. And GF / TPCi are unique in requiring competitors to sink hours and days of mindless grinding to creating what amounts to nothing more than their load out for a competition. The activities you are required to complete in team building are not beneficial in anyway to your ability to compete in sanctioned play other than to gain access to your load out, and it's a grind loop you are expected to complete for each and every piece you intend to use, sometimes having to restart entire games if the mon needed is legendary and needs a 0 IV for example.

Players of other eSports do need to train, and they do so in activities that improve skills used during competition like reflexes, strategy, communication etc. The grinding required for team building in Pokemon doesn't provide any such benefit, you aren't developing competitive skills by grinding Tera Raids, money farming for vitamins, collecting components for TM's, hatching eggs, none of it. It's all mindless labour required to get access to a game piece. A gun for your load out, a champion for your moba, nothing more.

Cheating should not be condoned, and GF / TPCi are in the privileged position that most other organizations overseeing competitive environments are not. They control how people engage with their sport. They have the resources to do more than what they are doing, bearing in mind the progress they've made so far still required a highly knowledgeable and experienced player to spend nearly 18 hours to obtain a legitimate team, and that's with using RNG manipulation and a turbo controller to automate some of the tasks. It would have been much longer than that if neither of those shortcuts been used.

GF / TPCi are choosing this. They have the technology, time, and money to develop a method to totally remove these requirements, and allow their sanctioned competitive eSport to flourish without being lashed to solo RPG mechanics. They have been dealing with this since the very inception of competitive Pokemon, and could have at any point put the different elements together to provide that eSports environment. But they haven't. They have made conscious decisions to make potential players commit to this level of rigour to even begin to compete. So yes, when it comes to genning, it's a problem that they have the ability to totally remove as an issue. Their actions over decades tell us that no matter how many players get DQ'd, they aren't interested in actually addressing the root of the problem. So they are creating that perverse incentive, and they should be challenged to finally fix it instead of being defended for their inaction.

 

You're splitting hairs here now, and frankly it's getting a little exhausting. Of course physical equipment needs upkeep, maintenance, and may indeed need replacing due to wear and tear or an increase in specificity for the task it is being used for. When I said one off investment, I was referring to the work required to get access to Pokemon to play. We're literally sitting here talking about competitive play generally and VGC specifically, and what it takes to get involved. So I think rather than a mistake on my part between playing and competing, I think the mistake is with you where you think we're talking about just playing a Pokemon game, and we're talking about competing in a Pokemon tournament.

There's clearly some fundamental misunderstandings going on here. I'm not splitting hairs, I'm making clear very important distinctions that I feel you're missing in regards to the kinds of training people do in sports and eSports (it's not all skills development), and in highlighting that what's needed for competitive play goes beyond what's needed for regular play.

From my perspective, I feel that your arguments conflate merely starting playing with starting competing. Specifically, I feel that what you're putting forward is essentially arguing that everyone should be able to start competing with only what I see as what's needed to merely start playing. Or to put it another perspective.... I feel like you're arguing that people shouldn't need to work as much to start competing, and that the work required to do this is meaningless drudgework, whereas I'm arguing that this work is not meaningless.

And I'm sorry, Pokemon for your competitive team are game pieces. Pokemon is a turn based RPG, and the mons you use are pieces. Like cards in a deck builder, guns in a shooter, champions in a moba. And GF / TPCi are unique in requiring competitors to sink hours and days of mindless grinding to creating what amounts to nothing more than their load out for a competition. The activities you are required to complete in team building are not beneficial in anyway to your ability to compete in sanctioned play other than to gain access to your load out, and it's a grind loop you are expected to complete for each and every piece you intend to use, sometimes having to restart entire games if the mon needed is legendary and needs a 0 IV for example.

Players of other eSports do need to train, and they do so in activities that improve skills used during competition like reflexes, strategy, communication etc. The grinding required for team building in Pokemon doesn't provide any such benefit, you aren't developing competitive skills by grinding Tera Raids, money farming for vitamins, collecting components for TM's, hatching eggs, none of it. It's all mindless labour required to get access to a game piece. A gun for your load out, a champion for your moba, nothing more.

I feel your problem here is that you've started with an assumption that Pokémon are the equivalent to game pieces, without thinking about why they would be such. If you're starting from the assumption that they're the equivalent to game pieces, then yes, things seem unfair. I'm arguing that this assumption of Pokémon as game pieces is a fundamental misunderstanding of the position and role they play in the game.

The arguments you've put forward here are pretty much exactly why I say they are not game pieces, and that they should be considered as more equivalent to the physique of a physical sports player. As I said before, training up your Pokémon is effectively the equivalent of going to the gym and spending hours and days of grinding. So yes, you're right that grinding your Pokémon isn't going to develop competitive skills. But that's because training your Pokémon isn't equivalent to that kind of training. It's equivalent to the kind of training you do for a physical sport where you go to the gym and do some weightlifting or time on the treadmill. There's plenty of kinds of training beyond simply those for skills development, and eSports are not and have never been exempt from those!

And, just like I noted before, that is not merely mindless grinding either. Just as a physical athlete must plan out their exercise plan so they can have the appropriate physique for their sport of choice, so too does the Pokémon trainer need to think about the best way to train their Pokémon for competition. It may be a time consuming grind (though certainly nowhere near what it used to be), but that doesn't make it mindless.

Cheating should not be condoned, and GF / TPCi are in the privileged position that most other organizations overseeing competitive environments are not. They control how people engage with their sport. They have the resources to do more than what they are doing, bearing in mind the progress they've made so far still required a highly knowledgeable and experienced player to spend nearly 18 hours to obtain a legitimate team, and that's with using RNG manipulation and a turbo controller to automate some of the tasks. It would have been much longer than that if neither of those shortcuts been used.

Honestly, I don't think this helps your argument. If I told a physical sports player they only needed to spend 18 hours in the gym every few months, they'd be ecstatic. 18 hours is a much lower commitment to the functional equivalent of training your body than you would typically see in most sports. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if a number of eSports see players at the top competitive levels spending way more time in the gym (for stamina development, etc) than that.

GF / TPCi are choosing this. They have the technology, time, and money to develop a method to totally remove these requirements, and allow their sanctioned competitive eSport to flourish without being lashed to solo RPG mechanics. They have been dealing with this since the very inception of competitive Pokemon, and could have at any point put the different elements together to provide that eSports environment. But they haven't. They have made conscious decisions to make potential players commit to this level of rigour to even begin to compete. So yes, when it comes to genning, it's a problem that they have the ability to totally remove as an issue. Their actions over decades tell us that no matter how many players get DQ'd, they aren't interested in actually addressing the root of the problem. So they are creating that perverse incentive, and they should be challenged to finally fix it instead of being defended for their inaction.

Nobody's saying that TPCi are totally in the clear here, because there's certainly more they could do to make the competitive game more accessible, but I feel you're taking things way too far. You're basically claiming that, if a means by which someone can cheat exists, then the fault for cheating existing lies with TPCi rather than the cheaters. As far as I'm concerned, that's misplaced. No matter what changes are made, the incentive to cheat will always remain. TPCi isn't making cheaters decide to cheat. The fault for cheating can only ever be assigned to the cheaters themselves.

 

We can safely put physical sports aside in this. VGC is purporting to be be an eSport, so any analogy relating to the training undertaken by athletes from physical sports is at best not applicable, and at worst totally disingenuous. We need to be comparing apples with apples here.

For avoidance of any further doubt, if an aspect of the eSport we're discussing only exists within the confines of the game's environment, it's a game piece. It's not a muscle, or a bone, or a nerve ending. It's a part of the game that is being played. Zarya is a game piece, as is Ryu, as is a Desert Eagle, as is an Ursaluna. What GF / TPCi are doing in walling of its game pieces between different games and behind hours and days of labour is particularly pernicious in comparison to other eSports.

I don't need to plan meals for Ryu to optimise the speed and impact of a Hadouken. I don't need to play a mini-game to ensure my Desert Eagle is well maintained, properly cleaned and greased so that none of the components cause a misfire during a game of Search and Destroy. I don't need to buy Overwatch 2.5: Electric Boogaloo to get access to Tracer, Winston or Soldier 76 for my Overwatch team. In these terms, VGC is one of, if not the, most inaccessible eSport to begin to play.

And this is not a new problem. It has existed since Journey to America, and GF / TPCi have only recently made token attempts to make things better. And these fall woefully short of the standards of its competitors in the eSports space. VGC is handcuffed to the solo RPG in a way that severely compromised its accessibility to new players. GF / TPCi have had the components and resources available to solve this problem for a very long time, and they have either refused or failed to put it all together.

The devs for PkHex and Showdown have managed to achieve a facsimile of this with no resources other than time and dedication to the endeavour. I will not give GF / TPCi a pass for their inability or lack of interest to do the same. They have developed battle simulators. They have utilised rental Pokemon that cannot be used outside of specific game environments. All they're missing is a teambuilder and with a modicum of investment of time, money and manpower, they could blow anything the community has developed out of the water. Call it Pokemon Stadium 3, bolt it onto Home, it doesn't matter. They could have done it at any time, and they have chosen not to.

People very clearly want to play VGC. And they are unfortunately resorting to circumventing the rules in order to have the opportunity to compete in the first place. They want to do what most other eSports competitors do, which is focus their energy on their craft. Getting better at strategies, developing in-battle instincts, discovering unique solutions to meta game problems. But GF / TPCi has chosen to put obstacles in the way of that, totally unapplicable labour that in no way enhances the skills of the competitor, but is necessary to even begin to play the game.

 

Saw this recent announcement in regards to the 2024 Pokémon Championship Series Season for VGC -

Further Updates to the 2024 Pokémon Championship Series Season

Find out where this season’s Internationals will take place, and learn about a huge boost to Championship Series prize pools!

www.pokemon.com

Pokémon Company International is so corrupt that they're now creating more incentives for players to cheat in the Mainline video games by increasing the prize money for the 2024 Pokémon Championship Season for VGC. Why are they constantly lying to Game Freak to cover up all the cheating taking place especially after what recently happened at the 2023 Pokémon World Championships? What's even worse is that most of the Pokémon Community on YouTube still condones this type of behavior.

How do VGC players even compete at this point? How is it fair that the players who hack their teams get their stuff instantly compared to those who had to put in the work for it just to lose against them without even cheating? Save editing Pokémon doesn't make the games more accessible and bring more players in when it has the opposite effect. If they actually cared more about competitive integrity then Pokémon Company International wouldn't be defending VGC cheaters like Wolfe Glick and Kurt who created the hacking tool PKHeX.