The Pokemon Company responds to player backlash, changes competitive tournament structure

After what ended up being the biggest, official competitive Pokémon event ever at the Orlando Regional Championship, The Pokémon Company has listened to player feedback and is changing the format for all upcoming VGC events.

For the Orlando Regional, 780 players competed in the VGC portion of the event, essentially making it so even if a player went a very strong 8-2 against the field during their Swiss rounds they would still have a good chance of missing top cut, depending on who they played.

The sheer size of the event led to a 14-hour day of competition for players in attendance on day two, with standings being posted at 10.45pm at the event and players still needing to go through legitimacy checks for the final day of matches before heading back to their hotels—ahead of a 7.45am call time the next morning.

This was a major point of contention for players of all skill levels who praised the event overall but asked for a change to ensure these types of things wouldn’t happen again as competitive Pokémon continues to grow in popularity.

Now, TPC and its event organizer partners have swapped the official ruleset so Regional Championships will run on a two-day tournament structure that was already utilized for Pokémon TCG events. 

Essentially, this change will eliminate 10-round days by shortening the first day of competition and extending the cut for day two to anyone with 19 or more match points or Top 32 players based on ranking, whichever number is greater at the end of day one.

This means Swiss rounds will extend to day two before the top cut is taken at events with 227 or more players in attendance.

These changes should allow players to rest more between days of competition and might increase the quality of gameplay on day two since players will have less reason to drop out early due to poor day-one results, depending on turnout. It also potentially lets the broadcast team stream more games from top players, many of which end up being played off-stream due to time constraints. 

You can view these new format changes in the official Pokémon VGC and TCG rulebook. They will be in place for the upcoming Knoxville and Bochum Regionals.