r/Pokemon goes dark & Team Rocket takes over

Plus, 4 pro players give the finger to Pokémon Korea

Author

Cooltrainer Ace
June 15, 2023 • Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

Welcome to the last week of spring and another splashy issue of The Victory Road, brought to by the trainer, the legendary, the mythical, the one and only, Cooltrainer Ace.

Here’s this week’s rundown. (Read time: 5 minutes)

  • Prepare for tr-DAAIJkjaGKl!^asKg*ShGJ...... (Team Rocket takes over Pokemon’s social).

  • r/Pokemon goes dark… and may stay that way.

  • 4 players get permabanned for giving Pokémon Korea the Metronome.

Team Rocket steals the show to… sell merch?

To celebrate the release of the Team Rocket HQ Collection at Pokemon Center, The Pokemon Company handed the reins over to team rocket for the day yesterday.

The result was what you probably expect: lots of Zubat, Rattata, and Giovanni appreciation posts.

I’m not sure how many Team Rocket t-shirts they sold on the Pokémon Center yesterday, but I know one thing: Giovanni never had the guts to come face me down on Floor 2 of Victory Road. 😤

r/Pokemon goes darker than Rock Tunnel

Like many subreddits protesting Reddit’s API policy change, r/Pokemon went “dark” (aka set the subreddit to private) from June 12-14. Cooltrainer Note: the Reddit remained dark as of 10 a.m. Eastern today, June 15.

The mod team listed the following reasons for being against the change to make third-party apps pay to use the Reddit API:

As a mod team, we typically steer clear of sitewide protests: we value r/pokemon as a space for people to find community, safe space, and escapism from issues outside Pokemon (the games, the franchise). After significant discussion, however, a strong majority of the team has voted to go dark.

That the API changes will have a deeply adverse impact on r/Blind and blind users on reddit generally is particularly resonant from r/pokemon, as we consider the fact that mainline Pokemon games have become increasingly inaccessible to visually impaired players. We recognize that accessibility is important to our community, and is therefore important to us.

r/pokemon mod team

So what’s next? Many subreddits have already made the decision to remain dark (perhaps permanently), while others are opening it up to a vote among users. As for r/pokemon, they haven’t decided yet, stating they will “assess whether or not to sustain the blackout depending on (Reddit) admin response (to the protests).”

In other words, if Reddit doesn’t shape up, r/pokemon maybe be gone forever.

Metronome (aka the finger) in action

Pokémon Korea gets the finger, drops the banhammer

Much like Tinkaton squaring up against a Corviknight (if you know, you know), The Pokémon Company Korea permanently banned four players from official circuits earlier this month.

Why? Well, that’s where things get a little confusing. One of the permabanned player, @NashVGC shed some insights from the players’ perspective.

Pokémon Korea has an independent VGC (video game championship) circuit. Since COVID-19, competitions have been held entirely online, which created a whole cave-full-of-Zubat-level of problems. Aside from this, players had frustrations with the tournament formats, poor communication and compensation, and an overall disrespect for players.

Four players named Nash, Blue, Sangyoon and Mija were the Top 4 of the ladder tour meaning they were all locked in for the next round, no who beat who. To protest Pokémon Korea’s recent decisions, the four decided to exclusively use the move Metronome in battle. (See pic above).

Well, Pokémon Korea didn’t appreciate getting a finger, even if it wasn’t the middle one.

They sent an email to all four players letting them know they were disqualified for using “Pokemons that learned one specific move” which is apparently a prohibitive act due to “giving an offensive image” (the finger metaphor, I guess?) actions that they “deem(ed) inappropriate.”

Then, just like a well-timed Sunny Day, things got even more heated.

Pokémon Korea released a new public statement that said the players were permanently banned from official circuits for the following reasons:

  • All player's battle teams included hacked Pokémon.

  • All players had an agreement prior to the tour, making it prone to collusion.

Neither of these reasons were listed in the previous email sent to players, however. And Pokémon Korea did not return any calls or reply to the players via email.

At this point, players are out of options to challenge the ban, but hope the whole debacle will shed some light on Pokémon Korea’s VGC issues.

2016 World Champion Wolfey Glick summed it up best in a reply Tweet: From an outside perspective it seemed like this incident had the opportunity to be a turning point - TPCk could have listened to the feedback and made the circuit better given how upset the players are. This feels like them saying “we don’t care, deal with it or we’ll ban you.”

Random encounters around the internet

Obscure Pokémon Fact of the Day (from u/Mx_Toniy_4869)

Until next time,
Cooltrainer “I am your HM05 in the darkness” Ace