It always sucks for me to have to talk critically about a game company I like or game that I enjoy playing, and Pokemon is a game I literally love to play. Heck, I've already put over a hundred hours into Pokemon Sword over the past month and was actually shiny hunting for a Grookey with the Masuda Method when I first saw this news pop up. (And no, by the way. After three straight days of breeding I still haven't received a Shiny Grookey. And know I hate them.) But it wouldn't be fair of me to treat one area of coverage with preferential treatment for whatever reason, so I couldn't just let a story as important as this one pass me by.
Firstly, let me establish a little background for you all. In previous Pokemon games, everytime a new generation was released with it's cadre of new Pokemon, the games always maintained the coding of every previous Pokemon, allowing them to join the game through an additional Pokedex that was known as 'The National Pokedex' as opposed to the 'Regional Pokedex'. But it wasn't possible to capture those Pokemon from previous games in the new games, so how would one fill out that 'National Pokedex'? Well, through a service known as the Pokemon Bank, of course! The Pokemon Bank cost £5 a year and allowed for the user to move their Pokemon from game to game across consoles and generations. This meant that people could bring their Pokemon with them all the way from the initial implementation of this system to the newest release. Or at least they could, until Pokemon Sword and Shield.
As I have covered before, for Pokemon SWSH Gamefreak decided to go a different direction with how they wanted to implement their Pokemon. (And if that sentence sounded vague to you, then I accurately nailed my impersonation of their power for explanation on this matter.) For whatever reason, Pokemon SWSH would be the first game to break the streak and axe the National Pokedex in favour of packing the base game with as many Pokemon as possible. This ended up only being exactly 400 Pokemon which was just under half the amount of Pokemon who existed in the franchise as a whole. Fans were understandably rather upset about this, feeling as though they had been ripped off, but Gamefreak assured fans that they had done the best they could and there was no way they could bring all the Pokemon they needed to on time without a delay. (Which fans happily asked for, but Gamefreak doesn't listen to them, they listen to investors.)
Of course, things started to make a bit more sense when the announcement dropped early this January that Pokemon SWSH would be the first game in the franchise to receive DLC. Not small scale micro-purchases, but full-blown expansions of land, story and Pokemon. These new locations, 'The Isle of Armor' and 'The Crown Tundra' would be flush with a bevy of the Pokemon that were missing from the base game, explaining their absense rather nicely. Gamefreak had planned on DLC and needed to recycle some of those previous Pokemon in order to fill up these new areas. (Also, given that these two DLC's only add 200 more Pokemon, we can probably expect two more to be announced next year.) Gamefreak were eager to add that this was not just a case of them recycling old content and charging for it, (although it kinda is) and they sought to reassure fans by letting them know that, as soon as the DLC dropped, folks would be able to withdraw their corresponding Pokemon from their Bank. (Which presumably means we'll see some regional variants in the eco-system.) Also, DLC Pokemon could be freely traded with those that declined to purchase the content, making it feel less like a hard roadblock. (But still not shaking that feeling entirely.)
And that brings us to the news recently for, you see, Gamefreak have revealed the next step of their master plan, and it may just leave the Pokemon fan-community with no survivors. You see, Gamefreak have been wanting to transition away from the Pokemon Bank for a while now and move to a platform that is more integrated with core features of Pokemon. Something that would be invaluable for every player to get their hands on, not just those that are looking to bring their army from game-to-game. It is for that reason that Gamefreak have pulled back on online features to such a point where Sword and Shield feels like a total crap-shoot as to what you'll get from the trading. And so was born Pokemon Home, the new service that would integrate a global trade system, extended Pokemon banking and, down the line, the ability to move Pokemon between games. (At launch it will be between 'Pokemon: Let Go Eevee and Pikachu' but later they'll add 'Pokemon Go' support.)
As they described it, Pokemon Home was supposed to serve as a home hub for players to come back to between their adventures. A nexus with hooks that link every franchise game together going forward and ensure that one can play and interact with their Pokemon wherever they go and become a mindless Pokemon-obsessed zombie. (So a utopia, right?) This new service would completely replace Pokemon Bank and completely eclipse it in features, so most folk were pretty excited. Such a shame, then, that the service is charging an extortionate £14 annually for the 'premium' version of the system. Way to try and literally fleece children for money, Gamefreak! (I wonder if this will negatively hit back at Nintendo due to that common misconception that they have anything to do with these games?)
Of course, the launch month will be free in order to allow people to transfer their Pokemon to the new game (to get you hooked) and there's a free version of the service that you can use thereafter. But there are so many drawbacks to the basic version that it's insulting to offer it in the first place. For one, you can only store 30 pokemon (as opposed to the 6000 in the premium version) and you cannot move Pokemon from the Pokemon Bank service to Home without the premium membership. Why. Literally why. If basic subscribers only have 30 bank slots anyway, what is the actual harm? No to mention, if they're currently using Pokemon Home, that means that they are paying for that subscription, so you're charging people 2 subscriptions for the honor of moving their Pokemon to the current Gen. (At what point is this supposed to be okay?) Additionally, Basic users are given the table scrapes for using the GTS and Wonder Box mechanics and cannot host trade rooms. (That last bullet point at least makes a little sense.) Finally, and bafflingly, basic users cannot use the judge mechanic on their Pokemon. That is literally a mechanic you can unlock by beating the main campaign (and the first rank of Battle Tower), why paywall it on your stupid app?
This is terrible way for Gamefreak to treat their hardcore audience after all the nonsense that they've put them through already up until now. Stripping and neutering trade features and then charging a subscription for their reimplementation is the kind of desperate grubbing tactic that you'd expect from EA, not a children's game company! What's more, this comes at a supremely bad time considering that 'Tem Tem', an early access Pokemon clone, has just come out and is proving to be steep competition for Gamefreak. Yeah, their monsters may not be anywhere near as cute, but they've got Online infrastructure that doesn't feel like it's from the late 90's. The Pokemon Company is not, let me remind everyone, hardup. Pokemon is one of the most profitable brands in the world (I think it was 3rd, last I checked) and that is a brand built upon a foundation of trust and history. If these guys seriously think they can try to rip off their consumers, and hide behind that legacy to keep them clean from the splashback, I respectfully recommend that they take a good look at the toilet bowl that Bethesda and Blizzard's respect has been flushed down in the past year. If there's one thing the gaming community is good for, it's a consumer revolt.
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