Pokemon fans baffled as Sword & Shield art director mass-deletes tweets

Pokemon Sword & Shield’s art director sparked intrigue when he mass-deleted tweets containing development info. This comes after a gaming historian uncovered interesting facts about the RPG.

The gaming industry was changed forever when Pokemon made its debut on the Game Boy in 1996. The addictive RPG became a staple in every kid’s childhood, and has become a cultural phenomena.

However after a historian posted facts about the long-running Nintendo franchise’s development, the art director for Sword & Shield mass-deleted tweets which contained the information, sparking confusion in the community.

Sword & Shield art director deletes tweets

Dr. Lava is one of the most popular Pokemon historians working to preserve details of the franchise’s development history. However after using Sword & Shield’s art director James Turner’s Twitter account for information, the artist began to mass-delete some of his tweets.

On February 23, Lava posted, “I recently searched through Pokemon art director James Turner’s entire Twitter history to extract development info. But as soon as I started sharing this info… James deleted ALL those tweets.”

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His tweet included a photo which showed the artist had deleted posts he had made in the past. Interestingly, Turner allegedly previously revealed that “Pokemon designers don’t get to name their own creations. Game Freak keeps a real life Name Rater on staff.”

Dr Lava then speculated why the artist had removed his posts, stating, “James’ tweets revealed information about Pokemon design, development details, and more insider info. Clearly, Game Freak didnt want this info made public.”

According to the historian, the Sword & Shield director specifically deleted all Twitter posts that included development information. “All his development info was wiped off the internet. I asked James if he’d prefer I keep them private. However, he didn’t respond.”

Included in his tweets about the incident are preserved development facts that Turner had removed. For example, apparently artists usually don’t get to choose the shiny color for the monster they have created, and have no say in their battle movesets.

At the time of writing, neither James Turner or Game Freak have responded to the situation. So it’s anyone’s guess as to why they tweets were removed, although it’s pretty common for studios to want to keep things tight-lipped.

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If nothing else, this sparks a debate about whether information like this should be preserved by the public. A lot of history from games has been lost over the years, so social media posts are sometimes the only way for that information to be known.