Sword & Shield players are finding unreleased Pokemon in Surprise Trades

Sword & Shield players were left baffled when they started receiving Generation VII Pokemon that aren’t even in the game yet during Surprise Trades, and were left questioning where they came from.

Pokemon Sword & Shield dropped in November 2019, and saw players taking on the Galar region which was largely based on locations in the U.K. The RPG released to positive critical reviews and enormous sales.

However, the beloved Nintendo title also faced backlash from the fandom over the developer scrapping the National Pokedex. Now, hackers have made it possible to get characters from previous gens in the game, and trainers are randomly receiving these monsters through Surprise Trades.

Unreleased Pokemon in Sword & Shield

With the eighth generation release, Game Freak decided to scrap the National Pokedex, meaning players couldn’t bring in the Pokemon they caught from previous entries in the franchise. Sword & Shield was very limited by the characters represented across the gens as a result.

• Read More: Sword & Shield cosplayer makes a splash as Sobble

However over on the Pokemon subreddit, user ‘giveitabone’ was left stunned when they received Gen VII’s fire starter Litten. With good reason, since the beloved cat isn’t actually in the game. “Just got this Litten from surprise trade???” they posted in confusion.

How is this possible? Well Redditor ‘ccclix’ commented on the post and explained, “People generated raids for the unreleased pokemon. They got bred and are now being traded away.” The person that made the topic replied and exclaimed, “That must be the reason. Because I just got a Squirtle from Surprise Trade too!”

Shockingly, fans of the series have been running into illegitimate raids since early February, such as Reddit user ‘NewBacon’ who posted a photo of having joined a G-Max raid with Sun & Moon’s Legendary Solgaleo.

The latest title in the long-running franchise has apparently been hacked, with tricksters generating raids with Pokemon that aren’t actually in the game. User ‘frostwalker’ explained, “It’s an hacker who has recently created hacked max raid battles with legendary pokemons like mewtwo or solgaleo or staters like squirtle, which are not in the game right now.”

Interestingly, after the monsters are being caught from these events, trainers are breeding them and trading the offspring throughout the playerbase. So don’t be shocked if you suddenly receive a character that isn’t actually in the eighth generation title.

At time of writing, neither Game Freak or Nintendo have commented on these hacked raids. But it makes you wonder, even if they patch it out, what about all the Pokemon that have been bred, and were legitimately traded in the game?

• Read More: Has Sword & Shield’s biggest mystery been solved?

Fans of the series not entirely happy with Sword & Shield’s roster have ‘Home’ to look forward to in 2020, as the paid subscription service will finally allow them to add their previously caught monsters to the latest release.