There are three kinds of Pokémon players. They are casual players, shiny hunters and breeders (Personally, I’m a breeder). Breeding involves finding two compatible Pokémon, putting them in the Pokémon Nursery and hatching egg after egg until you find your perfect Pokémon, one with your desired nature, ability, egg moves and max IVs in stats that the Pokémon will be using, often HP, Attack/Special Attack, Defense, Special Defense and Speed, depending if you’re using a special or physical attacker or a wall, a Pokémon with high defenses but low speed as it won’t be attacking. The entire process can take up to multiple hours, sometimes hatching as much as 70 eggs to get that perfect Pokémon. Not many players say that they have that kind of time, so they use hacked Pokémon, Pokémon created online battle ready and sent to the 3DS via PkHex or Powersaves. People who use hacked Pokémon in online play are known as cheaters within the Pokémon community.

To combat cheating, the Pokémon company has banned 7,651 players from using online functions that are known for using hacked Pokémon when battling other players or wondertrading them to other players who aren’t aware of the difference between a hacked and a legit Pokémon. The most Pokémon that is hacked and wondertraded is a shiny, 6IV Japanese Ditto, has they can bring down up to 5 IVs with the help of Destiny Knot and raise the odds of hatching a shiny Pokémon, a Pokémon of a different color than the usual, but not necessarily stronger than the latter. Not only does the ban include online battles and wondertrades, but banned players can’t use GameSyncs or participate in Global Missions. It’s not a complete ban, as banned players can still use those hacked Pokémon in normal gameplay.

Many players have admitted to using hacked Pokémon in competitive play, which is highly looked down upon because it bypasses the time it takes to breed that competitive Pokémon that I and other players bred legally. Lately, Pokémon YouTuber Verlisify has been very vocal against hackers, posting multiple videos about how hacking should be banned, often causing controversy within the Pokémon creators on YouTube whose channels are based on Wifi battles as well as the Pokémon community as a whole.

This is the second wave of players being banned from online play; In January nearly 6,000 players were banned from online play for using hacked Pokémon. While the Pokémon company will never be able to ban every cheater in the game, hopefully, these bans will discourage players from hacking in their Pokémon.

My advice to players who hack Pokémon is to just use them on PokémonShowdown, a battle simulator that allows you to create the competitive Pokémon on the spot.