Pokemon Sun and Moon launch tomorrow, and, expectedly, Pokemon fans are pretty darn excited.
There’s a huge midnight launch event happening at Melbourne’s Federation Square, so be sure to get there and put your pre-order in to get the game as soon as possible.
With hype so high and gamers anxiously anticipating its release, some have resorted to piracy to play it before it officially hits store shelves.
The game’s Pokedex was leaked last week, and a number of players on Reddit and 4Chan had reported playing it early thanks to the wonders of ROMs. Safe to say that the leaks came from one of these folk.
Unfortunately for them, however, it appears that Nintendo is clamping down on sneaky Pokemon trainers, slapping anyone that’s played the game early with a ban from online features.
Whenever player’s try to access Pokemon Sun and Moon‘s World Trade feature in the multiplayer mode, they are slapped with an error code saying their device’s online access has been restricted by Nintendo.
The error code on the official Nintendo website treats it not as a ban, but rather an issue that can be rectified by calling the service centre. Although, Nintendo has confirmed that the bans are indeed intentional.
“As a result of a number of Nintendo 3DS users using unauthorized versions of several games, and connecting to the official game servers in violation of our terms of service, these users’ Nintendo 3DS systems that stored the unauthorized game code have been banned from Nintendo’s online network effective immediately,” a Nintendo representative told Polygon.
So yeah, maybe don’t play anything other than the official game.