Thousands of Pokemon sun and moon players were surprised with an error while trying to enter online tournaments, rating battles and game sync in the Global Link multiplayer portion. This is because players used modified save data, The Pokemon Company announced on the Japanese Global Link page [Translated] on Thursday.
The ban is targeting those who hacked Pokemon into the game through unconventional methods that weren't supposed to be in the game. By doing so, players violate the user agreement, not to mention the uneven playing field against those who actually play by the rules.
According to an update on Serbii – the go-to place for all things Pokemon – 5,954 players have been banned from online activity for having altered save data. Banned players get the error, "the connection to Pokemon Global Link from this saved data has been denied. (Error Code: 090-0212)," while trying to go online using Sun and Moon.
The Pokemon Company is not resting after this, as the update notes that this is just the first wave of bans and certainly not the last. Users with altered save data will face similar ban without warning. But as Kotaku notes in its report, the ban is limited to users who performed the hacking, and not to the players who happen to have an "illegal Pokemon in Sun or Moon."
Currently, there is no workaround to get the ban lifted as the penalty for cheating is a permanent one and users cannot participate in global missions and competitions in the future.
But the bigger question is whether players are going to find a way around the ban in time by concealing what is triggering the alarm? Well, it remains to be a long shot from where we see it.
