Some Pokemon Scarlet & Violet players refuse to play the Gen 9 games out of fear after reports claimed update 1.2.0 included a bug capable of erasing save files with no way to restore them.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet had a somewhat rocky start, but Game Freak promised a series of updates that would fix the game’s performance along with many bugs and glitches. The first of these updates – version 1.2.0 – was released in late February.
While it seemingly fixed a few of the issues and introduced Pokemon Go connectivity, it also added a new bug that’s much worse than anything before. Players experienced game crashes and frustrating Tera Raid issues, and 1.2.0 added a save-wiping bug.
At the time of reporting, players aren’t sure what causes this bug to occur. But according to multiple reports on forums such as Twitter and Reddit, their saved data was lost after updating the game, buying the DLC, or connecting to Pokemon Go.
Save erasing bug terrifies Pokemon players
Despite these conflicting reports of what’s causing the bug, players refuse to pick up their Switches to play Pokemon Scarlet & Violet until the bug is resolved, not out of anger but in fear of what will happen to their file if they continue to explore Paldea.
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This has been highlighted in a few posts on Reddit, one coming from user Seffjem. The post captioned “I just feel so bad for those people” was flooded with comments from players taking extreme precautions to avoid losing their progress.
“I ain’t playing until it’s fixed, this means no iron leaves and no progress on gimmighoul for Pokémon go,” one user commented. Another lamented, “I’m terrified to even turn my game on lol I have almost 600 hours clocked and over 100 shinies…I’m not taking the chance.”
Luckily, players have updates to look forward to that could resolve the issue. Some trainers state they are waiting until Pokemon HOME is compatible to transfer their shinies, while others are waiting until the end of March for the next performance patch.
Regardless, this means players are missing out on limited-time events, the current one introducing two new Gen 9 Pokemon. And with Decidueye on the horizon, cautious players have to cope with missing out on a fan-favorite Gen 7 starter.