Strange Pokemon Sword & Shield glitch is changing move types

Pokemon games are no strangers to various forms of glitches, but this one is changing move types and completely shaking the game up!

In a video posted on Twitter from “Sorry-P The Catgirl,” the glitch happens when she scrolls through her party of Pokemon and then transfers out Lycanroc to her box.

“So I don’t know what caused this but I don’t think Close Combat is a Rock type move!” she exclaimed, realizing that something about the move was definitely amiss.

Close Combat is indeed a fighting-type move, so the glitch is clearly a malfunction. Just to be sure, we double checked and Close Combat has always been fighting-type — never rock.

The video starts with her checking the summary of her dual electric- and ghost-type Rotom, before flicking through the rest of her party. We don’t know whether this part has any bearing on the glitch.

From there she selects her Lycanroc and transfers it out to a box. Upon highlighting Urshifu next to it, its Close Combat move appears as a rock-type. After going back to Lycanroc and then once again to Urshifu, this time it appears as a fire-type move. The same thing happens to Iron Head, which is displayed as a fire-type move rather than its usual steel typing.

In battles?

We only get to see a 30 second clip, which means we don’t know if this issue continued outside of the box transfer.

Obviously if this transferred to battle then this would need to be something Game Freak and co. act on immediately, as it could greatly alter the outcome of matches and effectively nullify type advantages some Pokemon have over others.

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There have already been exploits that allow trainers to avoid losses in Ranked Battles, so a second one affecting the results of competitive battling won’t make things any better. Fortunately there haven’t been any reports of such an issue occurring within a battle.

You can rest assured if there was such an exploit plenty of trainers would be using it, and it wouldn’t take long to get the spotlight shone on it.