Pokémon Shuffle has been a target for hacks in the past, with the free-to-play download previously being targeted by those seeking to obtain in-game items without buying them. It's part of the 'game' that data hackers infiltrate titles, with Nintendo and other developers then regularly issuing updates to counteract them.
A reader has pointed us to an interesting issue with Shuffle at present which is frustrating serious players that are typically at the high-end of competitive leaderboards during special events. The current Charizard Special event, in which thousands have entered in each region seeking rare or expensive items as prizes, is currently topped in North America by scores clearly utilising a recent hack, which is unsurprisingly called Pokémon Shuffle Save Editor by those utilising it.
The hack is being used in extremely obvious ways, with 'mon not yet available in the game featuring in teams - namely Ditto. Users on the GameFAQs thread have been talking it over, observing that more and more of the top slots are being taken by hackers in the current contest, potentially pushing legitimate players out of the better rewards if this isn't resolved.
It's likely that developer Genius Sonority will exclude these illegitimate scores in the final reckoning - at least it should be likely. What's interesting is that the developer has been slow to tackle this hack tool, which is surprising considering the fact that it allows its users to manipulate all save data. This can mean maxing out all items, special obtainables, Pokémon unlocks and naturally all of their stats. It allows players to beat the game much easier - or access everything without beating the game - though some feel it should be tackled more urgently now that cheats are brazenly using the tool to enter online competitions.
This tool isn't new, it's been around a little under three weeks at the time of writing. The Nintendo Life reader that pointed us to this has reached out to various branches of Nintendo and Genius Sonority since early September, but with a lack of action feels that publicity may prompt the companies to implement a fix or blocker on it.
It's always rather intriguing to see the lengths some go to in order to cheat and access more content, though using such tools to win online competitions surely crosses any line in what can be tolerated. Of course, from a business perspective, Nintendo and Genius Sonority notably has a small number of hackers accessing paid content for free, which will surely be tackled.
Hackers will always target Pokémon, though Shuffle seems more culpable than most. Have you noticed this cheating in the game?
Comments 43
The save editor in question is apparently usable thanks to the YouTube exploit, or similarly the Cubic Ninja or Ironfall Invasion exploits, anything that enables someone to launch the Homebrew Launcher.
So yeah, it's a little too accessible for anyone to pull stunts like this.
Ditto apparently behaves like a wildcard just like in Pokémon Battle Link, which seems to make it incredibly broken resulting in the 660k top scores currently on the leaderboards.
Cheaters gonna cheat. Haters gonna hate...
I like Pokémon shuffle, haven't paid a penny into it but I like it. Also I haven't paid a blind bit of notice to these ranked battles because 10,000 winners out of 6-10 million players means those who don't spend on the game don't have a chance.
And apparently now the people who do spend don't have a chance either.
So why are they bothering to enter the competition in the first place if they can just hack themselves a Charizardite Y?
@MrGawain I don't spend any money on it either, but I still manage to win things from the competitions on occasion, especially the repeat runs.
What's curious is that only the NA leaderboards have save data hackers topping it.
You don't see this with the EU or JP leaderboards right this minute.
it should be noted that only a very vocal minority are complaining about this, and that as hackers score highly in the competition their scores are soon removed.
It's nothing to really worry about, just a small group of trolls taking up a few slots. The tool lets you hack in everything so a majority of the cheats don't even bother with competitions.
@emperorbob The last contest against Mega Sharpedo had a suspiciously high top score with Pikachu on the team.
There was suspicion the Pichu was actually Mega Gardevoir or some other unreleased pokémon, but there was no way to prove that.
Emperorbob is a SciresM & PSSE apologist.
If you read the thread on GameFAQs, you will see that hacking Pokemon Shuffle with PSSE is rampant and prevalent.
Emperorbob is the real troll, he attacks every person who points out the hacking activities. I don't know if he's a cheater, a hacker, a friend of SciresM (the developer of the Pokemon Shuffle save file hacking program), but he's clearly got an agenda to protect the hackers/cheaters.
Einsteiner has posted in the thread how he's been ranked in the top 28, with only the top 27 changing positions above him. Then suddenly he's ranked 88, so 60 people have passed him in the rankings in one day (which is ridiculous, and never happened prior to the PSSE hack).
So obviously, emperorbob is trying to hide the facts, by posting lies.
But if you read the posts on the Pokemon Shuffle GameFAQs board, you can see that emperorbob does this all the time.
Thank you for posting this story Nintendo Life.
Hopefully Nintendo, Game Freak and/or Genius Sonority will take some action to put an end the Pokemon Shuffle Save Editior.
It's ruining the game.
With Nintendo's partnership with DeNA for mobile games, it would help investor confidence if Nintendo showed it's willingness to litigate to protect its intellectual property rights.
Pokemon Shuffle is a free-to-play game, much like virtually all mobile games. It doesn't look good to investors, if Nintendo allows hackers to create programs to hack all items in the game (depriving Nintendo of revenue) without Nintendo trying to put a stop to it.
Nintendo stock was buoyed by people believing future revenue from mobile games would be forthcoming. If everyone hacks everything in the mobile games, they will not pay for microtransactions, and no revenue will be generated by mobile gaming.
Pokémon Company should ban those cheaters from playing Pokémon Shuffle Mobile for good like Sega has done with Sonic Runners, so I can get a Charizardite Y without cheating.
@BulbasaurusRex probably just to troll the leaderboards.
I played this game for about a week on my 3DS when it first came out.... I've never touched it since.
I never notice until now. I guess it's because I have played the competitive stage yet and I haven't surf the web in a few days. I hope it's possible to perma ban them from connecting with their NNID. Ruining the fun for the rest of us that play legit and spend hours to get to where we are. Plus it's not like they're paying customers.
The dumb part is, they just made themselves an easier target to weed out unlike the ones who play it safe and stay offline.
Haven't played Pokemon Shuffle, but have had enough experience in other games to know this sort of thing will always be the end result in situations where someone can buy or trade for "skill" against other players. People find ways to circumvent the system.
I'm looking at you, random number generated team building, trading card booster pack, exclusive limited time boosts, pay-to-win pyramid scheme nonsense.
At this point POkemon Shuffle is probably on auto pilot omaybe one perosn is making sure the events go up and the server is working. They'll get around to fixing this if they feel like it. I'm amazed people are still playing it in such high mass numbers.
@MrGawain
I've looked at the top scores an wondered how someone can get that high with those characters. Hadn't dawned on me until this article it was hacking not just plain old skills and loopholes. And now today it is painfully obvious its cheating since non standard pokemon are in the top. However, I'm ranked 699 as of right now (score of 50318, of course the hackers are over 600k in score, greater than 10x my score) and have not paid a cent to shuffle nor done anything but play the game. So it is entirely possible to get up to the top and win the megastones without cheating.
That being said, wow this is ridiculous. This one especially is cheat central in the last two days.
@james_mueller
I've heard that ditto apparently matches with any pokémon, as a result it's completely overpowered in this game and breaks it, you get endless combos.
Add me to the folks who hope that whoever can do something about it, will. Or maybe one among their ranks stands up and goes, "but guys...we can put the Charizardite and Mega Speedup in ourselves. Why do we need to ruin the online competitions when we can just let the scrubs squabble over their petty competitions?" ...y'know, or something similar to that. Anything to get them to leave the scoreboards alone.
@RupeeClock No wonder they get those scores.
@Captain_Toad i'll never understand these people
So they are hacking after all. Great way to suck any fun out of the game.
At least by being so obvious they'll make weeding out the cheaters a lot easier for whoever manages this game.
I don't understand why anyone playing Shuffle would be upset about the hacking for the current competitions except for those top players who battle for the top spot every competition not being able to see their scores. Those manipulated scores are definitely getting disqualified, there's even a line about getting disqualified for utilising unauthorized save data in the competition info itself. Let the hackers waste their time with this stupid stunt. The mobile versions will be easy enough to fix and they're just going to end up causing Nintendo to close the homebrew loophole they're currently exploiting on the 3DS.
Anyone who uploads a score using unreleased Pokemon should be blocked from uploading any score in the future.
I actually doubt those scores are counted. I mean, my original contest score of 30k~ is still in the top 4000, as it has been since the first day. One would think it would have gone up exponentially if so many people were cheating.
@Captain_Gonru A final full score breakdown owuld be really cool to see since that could allow you to know what Pokemon everyone was using. That's one of the things I do like about the competitions: they allow you to learn how others are playing and that a Pokemon you have passed off as useless might be useful if you used it differently.
It amazes me how people feel like they need to cheat for stuff like this. I wonder how many legitimate, hard-working players have been pushed out of the prize zone because of these lazy morons.
I'm not necessarily against software experimentation, but to use stuff like this to cheat people out of their hard work and (in terms of paid titles) money is just plain wrong.
This is what reads on the mobile version.
No reason to believe it wouldn't also apply to 3DS version despite the terms under the info tab not being updated yet to reflect the same message.
You'd think a cheater would want to keep a lower profile. Maybe come in safely in 1000th place. Coming in first just guarantees you'll be banned in the near future.
Known about this for a while and reported to Nintendo too. Much of the justification behind the hack was the "unfair" charges for buying extra jewels so hacking the save would allow users access to the things they missed out on as well as the ability to never have to pay for stuff again and artificially inflate the powers of Pokemon. Not keen on the free-to-play/pay-to-win model myself, but still...
Nintendo is ALWAYS slow to react to anything. As much as some may hate to admit it, Shuffle's likely making some type of profit and as far as the hacking goes, they're not going to do anything about that. What they should do, though, is simply get rid of the Mega Stone competitions, period. But they're not going to do that. And miss an opportunity for players to spend real money on IAPs for gems and coins to "win" the online competitions? Smh...
@Morpheel Not that many are cheating. I was ranked 9th yesterday morning and now I'm 40th. A good portion of those who passed me are likely hacking the game. Still, those 25-30 cheaters will be the difference for some legit competitors getting a stone and/or mega speed up.
Like you said though, I'm sure Nintendo will remove them. I hope they are blocked from future uploads as well.
Not only the score that are so outrageous, but I'm confused about cheaters that can so easily catch Blastoise & Groudon.
I'm glad I don't play this competively cause this kind of thing would drive me nuts. 20 years ago I might have played this competively. I feel bad for those who don't cheat.
Yup, their scores have been removed. I'm back to 10th overall. Sweet.
wait what theres a hax for this?
and I thought doing the bowser exploit was bad. but it never let me free gem...
anyways... Cheating in a Pokemon game? you don't say...
@RupeeClock lol yeah you do, I'm looking at the european leaderboard right now and it's all 99999999 scores.
@Mijzelffan
That's for the mobile version, which has been plagued with faked leaderboard scores.
With the 3DS version, it's being plagued with hacked saved games that use illegal pokémon like Palkia and Ditto, they are not yet released.
the worst about it:
the cheaters really suck out every bit of fun for all legit (maybe paying) players and themselves. wouldnt wonder, if the number of active legit players decreased to the half and if they want their money back.
what Nintendo should do:
1. Fix it and block the cheaters from every game in the future with the next Update
2. put them in jail
3. let their gaming consoles/mobile phones explode/overheat with the next Update.
Your forgetting that shuffle is designed to force you to use your own money to pay for jewels. They made sure that the new stages will frustrate you enough and force you to pay out of pocket for thier jewels, I have seen many people did this by buying jewels(even buying jewels is not enough because you will have to keep buying to upkeep with all the new material). Honestly i dont like how shuffle makes the new stages impossible to beat, or catch without using a large chunk of coins, which takes hours or even days to recover with meowth grinding. Some of us dont have the dexterity to reach 99k score like some of those people on the top scores, who arnt cheating. Furthermore they are also not without fault, they can use the "pause button that lets you to plan out your next combos, remember how shuffle now blocks you from using the using the home menu button.
@GreninJovan blastoise and groundon were easy to catch, you dint need to cheat for that. you just need to know how to use combos and the right pokemon effectively. the game really forces you to keep using great ball, even if the catch rate is 40%+, as opposed to 1-20% was an easy catch.
GO check this site for online Pokemon shuffle mobile hack: http://gamecheatx.com/pokemon-shuffle-mobile-hack/
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