A Japanese man has reportedly been arrested after being caught selling hacked Pokémon to Pokémon Sword and Shield players.
According to a report from the Asahi Shimbun, a 23-year-old man was accused of violating the country’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act by selling a modded Sobble – one of the Pokémon obtainable in the Nintendo Switch titles. The man allegedly hacked the character via computer and sold it to a Kyoto buyer for 4,400 yen, which equates to roughly $42 (thanks, Kotaku).
In Japan, modifying game data in this manner is enough to violate the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. The accused man reportedly confessed to his crime, and it's believed that he may have earned 1,150,000 yen (around $10,900) by selling modded Pokémon over the space of a year.
[source asahi.com, via kotaku.com]
Comments 50
Do. not. hack. the. game!
$42 for what’s easily doable yourself...?
Japan seems to be the only Country where Video Game Companies have enough Reputation and Lobbying to make such Corrupt Laws.
Edit: Other Countries have Corruption in more classical Industries.
The most that should happen to someone who hacks something in a game and sells it should be an online and console ban, not possible imprisonment.
Hard to blame them for trying if people are crazy enough to pay that much for something worthless.
I feel bad for finding this to be humorous.
Such a disgusting motivation to hack the game and violating the law.
For what purpose to hack the game ?
Obsession too much ?
How DARE you hack Scorbunny (and Sobble, and the third one).
@Anti-Matter... Money, money was the motivation. I thought that was pretty clear.
I think the fact that he was making money by 'modding' was the reason he was arrested.
@Kalmaro
I think other motivation was the mentality to get all of them instantly without working hard or playing fair. The obsession to get all Pokemons lead those peoples into impatience and greediness, they will do anything to get all Pokemons even by illegal ways because they want it now.
If he was selling illegal copies I could perhaps agree to an extent, but being arrested for hacking a friggin game? that's insane
The fact you can just buy modded Pokemon negates the reasoning behind Nintendo blocking cloud saves for the games doesn't it
What an idiotic reason to arrest someone. Console ban him sure, but arrest? Lol
Well that was silly.
Yeah, this is not a law that should exist. No actual crime has been committed here.
@NinjaWaddleDee how dare you hack in a sobble! That will be life in prison for you!!
But for real thats extremely dumb. I guess maybe I could sorta see it since hacking in pokemon and selling them could be seen the same way as, say, taking illegal copies of a game and selling it? Honestly I have no idea, I dont get it
@Anti-Matter Thing about that is, a modded Pokémon and a legit one, if done right, are basically identical. So it's really about them trying to save a ton of time.
People DO Mod Pokémon to cheat outrageously, naturally, but I think most hack to speed up the time you'd normally spend breeding for perfect stats and whatnot.
Personally, I also hold Gamefreak responsible for making things like IVs and junk since it's just adding extra steps for no real reason. It's very rare that you want a Pokémon that doesn't have max IVs and if everyone is doing it, may as well make it the standard.
When in jail, sitting next to the kartel or yakuza, telling their story, and then they ask you, what did you do? I sold pokemon. 🤣
Good. Stop cheating. There is no reason to hack Pokemon in SWSH. None. It has never been easier to get competitive Pokemon. And if you can hunt a shiny yourself or make a fair trade for one, then tough luck.
But I don't agree that it's criminal, he should be banned from the game, not arrested.
@SonOfVon He wasn't being arrested for hacking the game. He was being arrested for selling his hacks. Big distinction there.
As usual, the IP holders generally don't get this testy unless financial gain is involved. If he weren't selling them, he would have just gotten a hardware or IP ban.
This is weird, considering you can find legal vending machines in Japan that sell used panties worn by a Sobble
There's a lot of sellers on ebay that should be arrested then yes?
I feel like people are glossing over the biggest part of this, the dude almost made $11K off of selling these modded pokemon. The arrest may be overkill, but he was breaking the rules of the game, and selling a mod that affected it, he shouldn't go unpunished either.
i mean , it took me about two days to breed a team with max ivs and 3 days to reach master ball rank . whats so hard that people have to hack?
This wouldn’t even be happening if breeding was more simpler and less time consuming honestly if you think wasting more than 5 to 10 hours for a perfect Pokémon is rewarding good for you but not everyone wants to waste their time like that, as for this guy who knows maybe he really needed the money or just like easy money and honestly who doesn’t like easy money especially when he wasn’t affecting anyone
Out of all the PM who you would pay that type of money for why that? Getting battle ready is pretty easy and providing you have the shiny charm you could most likely hatch a shiny within a day or two.
As for hacked PM i'm not against them providing everything about them is what a legal version can have. I'm part of a Reddit group what gives out hacked or cloned PM in giveaways (charging money is against the rules and will net you a ban), i got a lot of event PM this way what would be really hard to get otherwise.
He's name is Blaines?
Imagine being in prison and being asked what you are in for and your reply being hacking Pokemon games... that would be more embarrassing than admitting to committing an actual crime.
Lock him up and throw away the Klefki!
@Ultrasmiles The fact people have to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again everytime the meta changes or they want a different set. Some people have jobs/school and ain't got time for that, they ain't exactly getting paid to be professional to make up for the time either.
Hacking is not illegal.
Hacking and selling counterfeit or tampered with products that he had no license to sell is illegal.
Remember that you only have a license to the game, you don't own the game or anything in it. The Pokémon you catch you can trade on Nintendo's servers but if you're doing financial deals, hacked or no, that's starting to look like a problem.
@Ultrasmiles not everyone has time &/or patience for that.
pokemon also suffers from something many rpgs do: needless grind. i said it before & i'll say it again: this hacking issue could of been slowed down by
1) they make all evs/ivs/movesets easily interchangeable in the game. they should just take pokehex and put it into the game but as something that has to be unlocked by beating the game.
2) they should stop with the event/paywall only pokemon nonsense and shiny locking things so they can't be shiny in game and up the encounter rate to 1/10
this would eliminate most of the needless grind that has caused this mess for years and subsequently render save mods obsolete, outside of just people messing around with mods in ways that are not meant to cheat.
@Xyroc It doesn't say he's going to be imprisoned. More likely, he'll just get community service and a large fine in excess of the money he made off the enterprise.
@GKO900 This is why I don't even bother with EVs and IVs. The most I'll breed for is to get a preferred Ability (which Game Freak stupidly made harder to do starting in Gen 6), the occasional good Egg Move, or to add baby Pokémon to my Pokédex.
While EVs were designed as an advanced mechanic to improve base stats in a custom manner, I don't think Game Freak ever intended for players to use breeding to improve IVs in the first place! They were originally intended to merely be a randomized difference between different examples of the same species, after all. I think they only caved and starting including methods to guarantee certain IV stats through breeding due to obsessed players breeding for IVs anyway and making suggestions that they wanted more straightforward and less randomized methods for doing so.
@SuperCharr It's really not that difficult to get those Pokémon legitimately in this era of online trading. Well, the Mythical Pokémon are difficult to obtain, but they don't usually count towards completing the Pokédex, anyway.
@Zenszulu No, he'd say he committed fraud, which is indeed an actual crime he committed. It's selling the hacks that got him arrested, not the hacking itself.
I would hope he's not getting jail time for such a petty '''crime'''... though TBH I'm more curious who's been buying Sobble for 42 bucks a piece, and where one could find their numbers for one's perfect spares.
@BulbasaurusRex I actually like breeding, IVs and EVs are what makes this a great RPG otherwise would be too simple I just wish it was less random and contrary to you I think IV were intended just not well implemented and in my opinion every single Pokémon has improved in breeding especially gen 7 (haven’t try in gen 8 since I got disappointed with that game) just not enough for more casual players
@Kalmaro But raising Pokemon is supposed to be like raising a virtual monster child. You'd still love a real child even if they didn't max IVs, would you?
@KingMike Not if their worth was based on how well they could fight and I could just immediately pop another child into existence instantly that looks exactly like them while being better.
On one hand, Nintendo wants your Pokémon to feel personal. On the other hand, they ruin that by making them randomly inferior and expecting you to have the best when pitting them against other people.
@FluffiestP1llow I think it's just unlawful use of the product/license. Sort of like how if you buya DVD, you're entitled to watch the movie, you can resell the DVD. But you can't host a mini-cinema and charge people to view it.
In this case it's fair that you shouldn't be allowed to distribute modified game data for profit.
@SuperCharr You can get those yourself as long as you're not too cheap to buy the DLC.
@GKO900 You're just one of those obsessed maniacs who convinced Game Freak to expand their plans for IVs. Raising Pokémon is already quite complex just from getting your preferred Nature (another thing I don't bother with unless absolutely necessary), Ability, moveset, evolutionary stage, and leveling it up to L50 (or higher depending on evolution and/or moveset requirements), and in past generations potentially a preferred Hidden Power type. EV Training then makes it even more complex and is included for the extremely competitive advanced players.
Going beyond that by means of a mind-numbingly boring process for relatively little payoff, especially for a mechanic that was originally meant to be completely random luck, sucks too much fun out of the games for most players including me.
@GKO900 SwSh and the DLC improved it even more. You don't even have BREED Pokemon to get egg moves on 'em, all you have to do is have the two Pokemon in the Daycare (one with an Egg Move and the target Pokemon with an empty move slot) and walk around for a bit and your target 'mon will come out with the egg move.
And as far as battling goes SWSH made it easier to level up Pokemon thanks to EXP Candies being INCREDIBLY common if you farm Max Raids. Combine that with EXP Candies FINALLY making Hyper Training accessable to everyone, removing the 100 EV cap for Vitamins, SWSH introducing Nature Mints (and making them INCREDIBLY easy to come across in In both the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra areas), Ability Capsules costing half as much as they did in SMUSUM (50 BP compared to 100 BP) and easily farmed via Isle of Armor's Cram-o-Matic, and the Crown Tundra introducing the Ability Patch and it's never been easier to make a tournament-ready Pokemon from.
After considering all of THAT you're really only paying for 3 things when buying PKHex-generated Pokemon: a painfully-specific IV spread that requires an IV other than 31 in one or more stats, Poke Ball type, and Shiny status.
Kind of silly to arrest someone over that
@ZebZed Sounds like SwSh did something good after all, thanks for the info I’m gonna hunt down a copy with the DLC included but for reasonable price no way in hell I would pay 90 for a game
@BulbasaurusRex I totally see your point but they could easily do a better job explaining how to breed for newcomers and making it more simpler and less time consuming
Imagine getting arrested for hacking a game. At most this should be a console ban.
this is a crime? banning him would've been the sensible option.
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