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Cheating ran rampant in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Series 1 as it did in Sword and Shield, according to a report by @Kaphotics. Several people have analyzed over a hundred rental teams from various events in the first series. Most importantly, some tournaments in it had nearly half of their contestants using a hacked lineup of some kind.
That, however, doesn't mean an individual Pokemon's stats were impossible to get via legit means like Hyper Training. Everything used in the VGC tournaments in the series was still on par with what players could legitimately get in terms of a Pocket Monster's actual competitive worth.
The main problem some gamers have with this recent news is that players are still relying on hacks to get their perfect teams. Some things, like six naturally perfect IVs, are still clearly omnipresent in these modded lineups.
Current report on the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Series 1 cheating being on par with Sword and Shield
The red part of the bar graph is the number of hacked teams, while the blue part is for the legitimate lineups. Based on this information, it would appear as though nearly half the players used some sort of cheating tool to get their Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet in most tourneys.
This kind of unfair gameplay is nothing new for competitive battlers. Sword and Shield also saw similar rates based on @Kaphotics' free hack checks, which presented only an overall 44% of legit teams based on their samples.
More data on these Pokemon Scarlet and Violet hacks
The Sword and Shield data was based on nearly 250 teams, whereas the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet information was derived from almost 100 lineups. While the size of the samples is different between the two groups, the overall percentage of cheaters still hovers around 50%.
The following tweet shows a way for players to see how @Kaphotics assessed these modified teams.
The top two finalists for the Tainan tournament are used as examples here. Readers can see that certain statistically impossible data — like the height, weight, and scale used alongside trash bytes — practically confirms that one of the teams wasn't made via legitimate means.
@Kaphotics would do the same thing analyzing some Liverpool and San Diego teams. Some interesting tidbits of information to include are:
- Some people had six naturally perfect IVs (i.e., not Hyper Trained) for everything on their team.
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet don't have a mechanic to increase such odds.
- The likelihood of getting something with six naturally perfect IVs is 1/4,294,967,296. Getting that several times for a tournament is extremely unlikely.
- Illegal use regarding the number of PP Ups.
- Most of the money and CP went to the cheaters than the legitimate players.
These kinds of things aren't what the average person would see, making them easy to overlook. Do keep in mind that these hacked lineups are possible to use in some rental teams. People are still doing rental code dodging. With that out of the way, it's time to talk about Series 2.
Series 2 has just started
Most of the above data were for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Series 1, which has already ended. The new Series 2 has recently begun, so there isn't enough information regarding any samples of cheaters for it. That said, there wasn't much of a difference between Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's percentage involving hacked teams in VGC compared to Sword and Shield. Thus, that's unlikely to change much between Series 1 and Series 2 in the same generation.
