The 2023 Pokemon World Championships began on August 11, 2023, where trainers from all around have been competing for top spots in games like Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, Pokemon Go, and more.
However, one player sparked controversy during the Day 1 VGC competition after they were disqualified for using multiple “genned” or modified Pokemon on their team.
Since the disqualifications, Pokemon fans on social media have started to debate whether or not modified teams should be allowed to compete in official tournaments, with compelling reasons for and against the rule.
Pokemon fans split over “genned” team bans For a bit more context, Pokemon player Brady Smith was DQ’d at 2-0 during Day 1 of the VGC competition after judges learned that members of his team were modified or “genned.”
According to Smith, he wanted to use Landorous and Urshifu on his team but since he didn’t have the games necessary to legitimately get them in Scarlet & Violet — Legends: Arceus and Sword & Shield, respectively — he instead traded for them. Those traded Pokemon were modified.
Now, fans from all corners of the internet are weighing in on the decision to ban, with many split on how this issue should be handled moving forward.
Some fans thought it was prohibitive to lock some of the best competitive Pokemon in Gen 9 behind separate games, like Legends: Arceus and Sword & Shield. “I feel bad for those who got disqualified… Especially, since the meta revolves around using Pokemon that you can only obtain from Legends of Arceus and Sword/Shield+DLC,” said one fan.
Hot take: any sort of competitive pokemon tournament should require completely fabricated pokemon built in save editors under certain restrictions (like they get however many perfect IVs, and a static distribution to do the others in). The idea that it should be both pay2win and based on grinding perfect stats is absurd. Let everyone throw together whatever optimized team comp they please within whatever restrictions the tournament wants, regardless of monetary or time investment.
Trash company trying to justify its greedy policies since gen 3 really, Brandy had no illegal EVs, moves or abilities but because he didnt want to pay the 60 dollar to have one pokemon he is punished.
Smogon singles continue to be the best competitive format for pokemon
The guy who invented the tool to make legal but generated Pokémon now does Twitter rants about how bad it is. In Scarlet & Violet Series 1 & 2, 50.1% of Pokémon teams included generated Pokémon. You can't ban half your players. I guess people will just stay quiet about it now.
It's true that over the years it's become easier to make competitive teams, but the fact that players still prefer to generate them instantly shows that no legit improvements will be enough. Pokémon just needs to let you design your competitive Pokémon, and their excuse that Pokémon are unique creatures falls flat for a million reasons. It won't happen of course because the companies involved in this are decades behind in listening to their players. That's why I quit Pokémon a few years ago.
At this point, why don't they just use pokemon showdown for competitions?
Can't be banned for generated pokemon if you're on a battle simulator. It also saves everyone so much time and money to not have to spend weeks and tens to hundreds of dollars just to get perfect ev/iv shiny competitive pokemon AND you still get to battle under the same trashy battle clauses.
Nintendo will likely try to take down showdown if an unofficial vgc league rivals their offical tournaments but at this rate a showdown takedown is a likely thing at somepoint in the future anyway. I can't wait for competitive pokemon to be in the same state as Smash.
Things got better after Gen 8 (in terms of training) to be sure, but I still hate spending hours just to get one alright Pokemon.
I imagine Game Freak/Nintendo DQ'd him because genning is technically modding, rather than them being concerned about cheating. If it were up to them, this would be a crime in the US like it is in Japan
It's illegal in Japan?! I guess that would explain why 98% of teams weren't genned.
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Game modding, save editing. ROM Hacking, and console hacking are all illegal in Japan and can cost you millions of yen or even land you in jail
they could probably cut down on a lot of the genned pokemon if they just added a rusty bottlecap that would reduce an IV down to 0. It's one of the last things needed for competitive battling. Everything else is super easy to do in-game when setting up a competitive pokemon.
