Following Pokémon Day 2023, players in Pokémon Go are able to connect their mobile app to a copy of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to unlock crossover content featuring Gimmighoul in its Roaming Form. And while the feature works as intended, it appears that a devastating bug is ruining the experience for a small number of players.
First reported on March 1, players across the Pokémon community began sharing their experience with the crossover seemingly wiping their game’s saved data from their Nintendo Switch systems—with the most notable post initially being removed initially.
According to Reddit user Matthewcbayer, he connected his Pokémon Go game to their copy of Scarlet/Violet. After sending a Postcard from Go to the Switch game, which is how you access Gimmighoul (Roaming Form) and its Coin Bag in Pokémon Go, receiving it, and then closing his game he later ran into issues.
When trying to boot up the game again three hours later, Matthew encountered a message noting that the “Save data in the Nintendo Switch couldn’t be recognized.” After testing multiple different things such as restarting the system, as the error message implied, he discovered that his 595-hour save file was wholly inaccessible and he could no longer launch the game from his main Nintendo Switch profile.
As Matthew noted, their copy of SV is still playable on their Switch system if they made a new profile for the console, even though the save data doesn’t work on that profile since it is locked to one user. This likely means that something about the Pokémon Go crossover content corrupted internal files dealing with SV’s save data—though it is still present on the system.
After that first post, and the follow-up Matthew made a day later, dozens of players have reported this happening to them across social media. And as of now, none of them have been able to find a fix or explain exactly why this is happening.
This is made even worse by the fact Scarlet and Violet do not support cloud save features on the Switch—Nintendo and The Pokémon Company refuse to allow that connectivity for fear of exploitation. There is a backup save feature, but in order to access it you have to get to the home screen of your game, which is impossible due to the error message booting players out before they get to that point.
It is important to note that this issue is only impacting a tiny number of players, and the actual cause for the bug is not yet known.
Many users impacted by the issue have put their heads together and theorized that it might not even be an issue with the Pokémon Go crossover features, but rather something to do with the latest SV patch—something that has already seen its fair share of bugs and criticisms. At least one person reached out to Matthew noting that they ran into the same problem just after purchasing the game’s DLC on the eShop.
Based on that information, and the fact neither Nintendo nor TPC have responded to any of the players reaching out about the issue, you might want to play this safe until a fix is found, despite it being a small sample size of negative effects.
This means no using any of the Pokémon Go connectivity features with your copy of Scarlet or Violet for now. Otherwise, you could find your save “wiped” with no way to recover it.
