Planned maintenance for Pokémon Sword and Shield is set to knock all online features offline for a limited time.
On Thursday, Dec. 5, Game Freak plans to tweak Sword and Shield’s online mechanics to try to make the servers a bit more stable and improve the overall service for fans.
| Scheduled start time | Scheduled end time |
|---|---|
| Thursday, Dec. 5 at 6am CT | Thursday, Dec. 5 at 9am CT |
During the scheduled maintenance time, all network services for Sword and Shield will be unavailable. This obviously includes things like online trading, battling, and raiding. Online services could go back up sooner or later depending on what Game Freak needs to fix and how fast the company operates.
The planned maintenance follows a string of issues with Game Freak’s Sword and Shield servers so far. The games’ online features went down randomly throughout the first few weeks for emergency maintenance.
Pokémon trainers who still want to play the game on Dec. 5 should prepare to do so without online features for a few hours.
