You could have a hacked Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet and never even know

Hacking has been a hot topic in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet ever since multiple VGC competitors were disqualified from the World Championships back in August, and now players are still left wondering if their own Pokémon are hacked or not. 

In an Oct. 9 Reddit thread, one player addressed a popular question regarding hacked Pokémon: How can you tell if a traded Pokémon is “legit” or not? Unfortunately, the answer is more complex than you’d think.

According to the post, as long as a Pokémon is tradeable, it’s “legal” to use online. This does not necessarily mean the Pokémon isn’t hacked, though. As we saw at the 2023 World Championships, multiple players were disqualified or penalized for bringing hacked Pokémon, even after playing a few rounds in the tournament.

The biggest issue with this is the fact that the Gen IX games do not always have the ability to tell you whether your Pokémon are hacked or not. In other words, even if you intend on obtaining all of your Pokémon legitimately, someone could simply trade you a hacked Pokémon without you ever knowing—especially if its build and moveset look totally legal. If there was an easy and reliable way for players to check for hacked Pokémon, perhaps some of those Worlds disqualifications could’ve been avoided. 

That being said, there are some huge red flags to watch out for if you aren’t sure whether or not a traded Pokémon is hacked.

If someone randomly trades you a Shiny Legendary with perfect IVs, for example, it’s most likely too good to be true. Other times, a player might trade you a suspicious Pokémon with a weird nickname or Original Trainer name. Basically, if something feels off about a Pokémon you were traded, it could very well be hacked. 

So just use your best judgment. And when in doubt, only use Pokémon you caught yourself to know for certain they’re all legit. That’s exactly what competitive players like former champion Wolfe Glick are doing to make sure they aren’t accidentally using hacked Pokémon without knowing it.

It’s just sad knowing players are now being discouraged from trading Pokémon—one of the core features of the franchise—in fear of being given a hacked Pokémon without any easy way to check its legitimacy. It would be helpful if the games could do a better job at detecting hacked Pokémon and let players perform their own hack checks on any suspicious ‘mons that were traded to them.