Since the beginning of the Pokémon game series, hacks and exploits have allowed special items and creatures to be duplicated. Unfortunately, 20 years on, nothing appears to have changed.
Yesterday, the infamous 'PKHex' program received a significant update. If you're not sure what this is, it's an application that essentially allows players to edit their Pokémon game save data. Earlier versions of this same application have been used to add fake digital pocket monsters to past Pokémon entries such as Sun and Moon.
Following the launch of Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, the "world's best save data editor" for the mainline series has now been updated. According to Nintendo Soup, hackers can unofficially edit their Pokémon, trainer battles, inventory and save files in the new games.
Depending on who uses PKHex, the same program can simply backup in-game saves - not that it makes it any more ethical. Though, when considering the new games are some of the few on Switch that don't support cloud saves, there'll be at least a few users out there who do actually want to protect their data - including the amount of time they've sunk into the game. After all, if anything happens to your Nintendo Switch, there's no way to legitimately recover or backup all of the rare Pokémon you spent a long time catching.
The creators behind the core series save editor have even posted a message alongside the update asking those who download the patch to not ruin the experience for others by cheating:
We do not support or condone cheating at the expense of others. Do not use significantly hacked Pokémon in battle or in trades with those who are unaware hacked Pokémon are in use.
What do you think about unofficial programs like this one being used to save game data? Do you think it'll encourage players to exploit the game? Should Nintendo have a cloud system in place to prevent the playerbase resorting to programs like this to protect their save files? Tell us what you think below.
[source nintendosoup.com]
Comments 74
Why? There's only 151 pokemon and the game pretty much hands you to them. You're over powered by the time you reach Mt.Moon.
I absolutely hate hacking in Pokémon games.
I say its good for those who want to back-up their save files.
@w00dm4n I was thinking almost the same thing. (There is a curveball in difficulty later, but nothing different from any other Pokémon game)
Folks using this can’t reliably battle online, right?
In virtually any other Pokemon games, I could understand save editing. I mean, I didn't agree with it, but I at least understood. But Pokemon let's go just seems to easy to even bother. You can beat it in a day and all of the pokemon are easy to obtain. Even shinies and high IV pokemon are relatively easy to chain for.
The only thing I can kind of understand is doing it for Mew.
There's no GTS or online battles unless you have friend codes.
For me, that makes this mostly a single-player experience.
That said, I may try to back up a save so I can try a second playthrough in Chinese to feel like I'm practicing. Unless I can just create a second account without affecting my main save, in which case I'll do that instead.
Whoa, hold on, before you start talking about how some may use this to backup their saves because they have no other options... Does Pokémon Let's Go have cloud backups?
Edit: looks like it doesn't. Wow.
if it is used in single player just to mess around then i have no problems with it
And this is why we didn’t get SD save backups in the first place. I hope Nintendo finds these cheaters and sues them.
Significantly hacked... How about just play the games as the developers intended? The Pokémon community is so weird about cheating.
If you have to hack pokemon games your a loser in life or get a life.
@w00dm4n I think it's more of a proto type for the 2019 one and over the next Nintendo will start putting in more anti hacking programming that the hackers will inevitably bypass and it'll keep getting easier for the hackers to by pass the update each time. It's more or less a learning experience for both sides
You'd need a hacked Switch yes? If so, those who uses this can't get online to disturb others, so that's fine.
@sanderev I think they will since Nintendo has the EULA so they should consider themselves banned for life. Remember we all agreed to the EULA the moment we started the game and that includes all and any games.
@Shadowmoon522 remember EULA if you don't then expect lifetime banns.
@Spectra The worst here is, that if something happens to your switch and your save data gets lost. Good bye 50 bucks Mew!
Regardless of morals and ethics....Doesn't the game just hand most Pokemon to you anyway?
@Aerona Because it can be fun to do something different. LAtely i have been watching some Rom Hacks of Pokemon on Twitch and having all Pokemons have random abilities and spawn locations is a nice mix up.
So as long as this stuff is not used to cheat in multiplayer i don't really care.
I guess it’d help those who don’t wanna fork out money to get Mew in the game and to help those get the other version exclusives. Not everyone has switch online to trade with people. I don’t use online as I hardly used it in the first place.
Plus save backups always help those, not sure why Cloud Backup was never an option in the first place.
Nintendo used "Ban Hammer".
It's super effective.
Hahah, ethics. That's a good one.
Mmmm-Mmmm, Nintendo moral panic brigade on the case!
@HatosBlack *It's not very effective.
Ftfy.
Cya
Raziel-chan
@Tyranexx Nah, not really. Still looking for a 3rd attempt on Abra, 21 hrs in
@flightsaber all you have to do is use Pikachu three times as your invite code and you’ll find people to battle/trade with
@Hunt3r_Cr0wl3y maybe because they’re planning on implementing pokebank by next gen release 🤔
I don't think I've seen anyone mention this, but what impact does this have on PoGo? Can't you transfer Pokemon from Let's Go to the mobile game? So can you get 100% IV Pokemon via this editor and then transfer them to PoGo?
If so, then all the arguments about this only impacting a single player game are moot.
@Boosthungry No, it’s a one-way street. Transfer for PoGo to a park area in LeGo, then they’re in the Switch world forever. Till they’re ground up for candies, anyway. 😅
awesome, great article, now people like me who were aching to hack their games and play online with an unfair advantage can do that! See you in game! 3 pikachus will be the code.
@Boosthungry You can only transfer from Go to Let's Go, not the other way around
@Draxa I hope we do get Pokemon bank soon. I’d love that.
@Katelyn1223 it would be nice to transfer from games to mobile. Think of the shinies we get in the Switch, it’d be nice on mobile
This is the smarter way to catch Mew.
@flightsaber
You can have another save by playing with another account. Works with every game.
Hacking disgusts me, but, while at risk of sounding hypocritical... I think this is great. If anything it's gonna force Nintendo to think twice about their selective cloud backups. The hacking part which can destroy the multiplayer experience is sad, but that's the price you pay when you screw over your playerbase.
Hackers make me sick. Pokemon is a kids game. Just stop.
Hmm. I’d consider this because there’s NO WAY I’m paying $50 for Mew and it’ll be the one hole in my collection. I’ve never even touched this stuff. Not even being able to transfer Mew from Go is beyond stupid.
@HobbitGamer: That's actually pretty accurate; Abra was a pain to get even in Gen 1.
Me: Oooh! An Abra!
Lobs Pokeball, Abra escapes
No problem, just let me...
Wild Abra used Teleport!
Wild Abra fled from battle!
.......
Does it exist a Splatoon 2 save back-up tool? I need it.
Eh, it's not like anyone is going to be playing this game seriously for multiplayer anyway, and hacking your single player isn't hurting anything.
@Tyranexx now it’s even more face palm because it’ll teleport before you can even start an encounter, haha!
Hacking in Pokémon is weak sauce.
@KatBear I agree. I use to hack in mons and throw them on the wondertrade sometimes, I’m not a big battler but always liked shiny trading. After I could make any shiny I wanted with whatever stats I wanted it ruined the game for me during sun and moon. So I traded my game card in with all my shiny mons which were a mix of legit and hacked in at GameStop which made some kid happy after loading it up cause they don’t reset the carts there. After that I’ll never do it again and am once again enjoying legit shiny hunting in let’s go.
@HobbitGamer: Those adorably fiendish little psychic foxes!
@sanderev Yikes
@HobbitGamer Sadly they can...
Big N is the ones forcing players to buy toys they don't want to get Mew so I don't think people will feel too bad about cheating him in. I don't use this thing myself but it's hard to say someone should just go out there and catch something you can't catch.
All this work just to circumvent systems which are there to protect the user experience. E-gads.
Ahoy the exploit apologists saying this is Nintendo's fault (for exclusive 'mon) and you have to cheat. Road meet slippery slope.
Switch ain't stable enough!
People ruin everything.
@Draxa PokéBank won't support the Let's Go games. Not even after the Gen 8 release.
@FTPinkRabbit It's not a nice move from GameFreak (not Nintendo), but it's a legal one. Actually hacking the game to put it in is illegal (piracy). So my point stands, Nintendo should find these guys and sue them.
@kuromantic That argument doesn’t make any sense.
If some people can’t afford something they just don’t get it. It’s as simple as that.
By the same argument you could also say that anyone who can’t afford an expensive car can steal one. I know that that example is way exaggerated but the concept is the same so...
I don’t care what anyone do with their game but when those actions start affecting me, then it bothers me to no end. And this affects us all. For starters this is one of the very reasons why Nintendo doesn’t allow cloud saves for this game.
And, as always, thank you Nintendo Life for increasing awareness so anyone with just a passing interest in hacking can now know exactly what to look for.
@Tyranexx When the game hands you Pokemon usually its in the worst case situation.
1. Fishing for rare (ending up with Magikarp for the 20th time)
2. Finding Golbat in a cave (using Mean Look that way I cant skip the battle)
3. Or of course, Rattata (Self-Explanatory)
@maruse So True.
@sanderev the last thing I read about it was that Masuda said that it was a possibility that the let’s go games could be forward compatible. I just assumed that if they did allow this that they would use an asset that they already have tested and will most likely be bringing to the switch in time for gen 8 which is pokebank instead of creating a completely separate one just for the let’s go games. If it’s been confirmed that they won’t be compatible with pokebank in any capacity then let me know.
I would love to have a Mew for my game. I’m not about to buy a $50 accessory to get it. Nor do I have any desire to hack my game for it. I’m willing to wait til it’s obtainable by other legitimate means or I’ll have to just go without.
People who hack in Pokemon are just evil TBH.
Back-up your save data in fear of losing it? You shot up a school.
Clone a Pokemon for a friend? You were involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Give a Pokemon the IVs you want instead of breeding for 3 months? You started the Holocaust.
@UmbreonsPapa sadly it’ll likely be the latter, as Nintendo has outright said that, once the Pokeball Plus stops being sold, Mew will be unobtainable. It’s a limited time product.
The hacking only matters in multiplayer and this game is so bad at the way it handles multi-player it doesn't matter anyway. The 20 minute time limit is way too short, the new system that replaces EVs is completely and utterly broken too.
I might play some friendly games against friends, but I doubt I'll try getting to into it. I desperately hope that we will get more traditional mechanics back in the REAL game next year.
Back on the topic of cheating, it was bound to happen, it always does. But I am surprised at how quickly they got it going. If I remember right, it took them at least a couple months to get it working when the first 3DS games came out.
I realize I might sound kinda harsh here. I am enjoying the game overall as a single player experience. Execpt when the joy-con doesn't register my throw correctly and the ball randomly flies off to the left or right for no reason I can determine...
There are some things in Let's Go that I hope bleed into the real games: Pokemon following you, Pokemon you can ride, some connectivity with Pokemon Go, I'd even like this catching mechanic to be an optional thing you can do, after battling the Pokemon the normal way.
Well, for whatever they need it. if i could do it, i'd hack myself a mew. Not fond of spending money on hardware to get a DLC that should be included in the game without rl obstacles.
I’m not one to judge articles like this, but if discussing hacking of current-gen consoles is forbidden in the forums, then why is it always okay for it to be mentioned in NL articles?
@SwitchForce that never really stopped anyone, nor has being banned as some hackers have purposefully gotten themselves banned just so they could find ways to get past it and have done so. This type of thing has been going on for years and it's hardly just a Nintendo issue.
Also putting to much anti-hacking programming can be counter productive to the point of, ironicly, having to hack to fix the issue caused by the anti-hacking software such as with with that anti-save game restore coding giving a false error after system transphers on 3/2ds systems.
@Shadowmoon522 must one that got hit by the ban then here. If you have to cheat to play then you get no grace but lectures instead. Can't play then don't even try. Plain Simple those cheating are that Cheating-means they couldn't win and resort to cheating to show how shallow they are.
@Blizzia The stupid thing is that the exclusion of cloud saves was specifically implemented to prevent hacking. The game is barely out and here it is already. So what's the point of no cloud saves again? It reminds of me always-online DRM in a lot of Ubisoft games. People will find ways to crack the game within a matter of weeks anyway, but the general consumer is in a way punished. These measures don't affect the people hacking games, but they do affect the people who play "fairly" and "legally". It's almost if they want you to hack their games...
@ShadJV You can't transfer Mew? Why not? That's pretty cheap if true.
@PolarExperience Good question!
@Octane Exactly, it's really such a bad business practice. Punish the customers so that the cheaters need to go through the loophole they always do anyway and cheat anyway.
To make matters worse, the cheaters also have access to save backups!
So not only do we not get to backup our saves (and Pokémon), we also have less features than hackers do, since they get to backup their saves AND hack freely.
Genius, Nintendo, genius.
@SwitchForce no, I haven't been banned nor have I cheated. The bug I was referring to is one thats fixed by backing up the data, letting the game auto delete it then restoring it from the back up that was made. Since the data is exactly the same as it originally was and was not altered it cannot be considered cheating as I never once altered it to be advantageous to me(if I had I would have been done with pokemon shuffle by now and not still being 2 pokemon short of completion)
Here's what the author says as well.
"We do not support or condone cheating at the expense of others. Do not use significantly hacked Pokémon in battle or in trades with those who are unaware hacked Pokémon are in use."
So anyone trying to says otherwise is living a wonderland. The tool is there but those whom lacked any morals or ethics won't care but then again why should we care about lecturing you as well. You can't take the heat for cheating then you obviously aren't a true gamer.
We can sell Shiny Mews on ebay now wooo!!
f:0">https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-Rare-Shiny-Mew-Pokeball-Plus-Pokemon-Let-s-Go-Pikachu-Eevee/143019195203?hash=item214c9bbb43:g:DhgAAOSwF~hb8m91:rk:4f:0
Edit: This isn't my listing, nor do I support hacking (mind my sarcasm in previous posts).
@Octane nope, you can’t. One per Pokeball plus and no transferring from Go. Just to incentivize people to spend the $50 for the accessory.
@Shadowmoon522 I mean I get it, especially for the older Pokemon games where you miss out on stuff if you don't buy it day 1.
I used to set up my extra router just to get Pokemon on DS or back in the day use the Gameshark to Surf in Pokemon Yellow.
I just don't understand why in this day and age companies that know a casual market exists don't offer "easy passes" on games like this or Zelda where an Infinite Heart mode would let people to just have fun.
@w00dm4n in the case of pokemon it's less about an easy pass and more about either making the perfect pokemon for competitions without the hassle, easy shiny pokemon or cloning legit events and shinys or to help with shiny hunting.
Another thing is that stuff like pokehex and pksm are also useful for checking to see if a Pokemon you got in trade was hacked, checking if any of the eggs you breeded are shiny and mass releasing eggs that have breedjects in them.
Also people tend to hack or make pokemon games in order to amp up the difficulty. An example of this being pokemon reborn, a game where's it's basically impossible to play without losing a few times, not including the battles which are meant to be lost for the progression of the story.
"Infamous"? The Pokéball Plus-exclusive Mew, coupled with the lack of cloud save support, flat-out proves that The Pokémon Company is hellbent on "turning players into payers" way before the lootbox scandals and "on-disc DLC" debates exploded elsewhere, and is generally more than happy with players being put back to square one should it ever happen.
It's not cheating anymore, it's fighting back - and generally something the Pokémon franchise brought upon itself. And if the datamining rumor about something we all suspected, namely all generations' Pokémon being in the game's code, is true, then I'm all for save data editing.
But heck I would use it to backup the stored data on the Switch when the new Switch 2.0HD 4K comes out that is when software like this becomes important. I'll experiment on my pokemon those I don't want not the ones I use because if you mess up well you lost them. As others said if they won't let the user move it to their MicroSD to backup when upgrading their Switch when the updated Switch does come out they shouldn't be surprised users want to protect their gaming hours investments. Now if they made a software on the Switch itself to offload to the MicroSD when migrating-I doubt they get any grief from their users but not doing so invites these program to come into play. And I hope they are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for why this is happening sooner than later. Now if you cheat to cheat your a sad case of game looser and need to stop gaming. If you really have to cheat to play then your lifestyle reflects those values in yourself as well.
@Shadowmoon522 I get it, i used to edit the GB roms of the original games and we'd you the pokemon editors to remake the maps and which pokemon spawned. it was a lot of fun.
I think there was a way to inject your own sprites during the GBA era of Pokemon so i would put family members faces as pokemon. I guess when it hit the point with DS where you could easily get the fake pokemon stats it took the fun out of the game for me. I had more fun playing Omega Ruby earlier this year than anything else. Once Nintendo started handing out Mystery Gift Pokemon it made the game to easy.
@w00dm4n well, it's not like you have to use the mystery gift given mons. Hell, you could just got it with nothing but a team of lvl 1 magikarp, caterpie, weedle, febas, wurmple and scatterbug all holding everstones til you beat red or blue outside the battle tree
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