What happened with Zorua's debut in Pokemon GO

Pokemon GO developers surprised fans at the final Spotlight Hour event in October by introducing Zorua using a unique method. However, this ultimately turned out to be a bad move for Niantic as there were issues just a few hours later.

Zorua was set to have a surprise debut as part of the Shuppet Spotlight Hour on October 25 from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm local time. Unfortunately, the new mechanism of encountering Zorua was reportedly a complex move for the developers to implement. During the Pokemon GO Shuppet Spotlight Hour, players would briefly see Zorua on the platform before Niantic announced that it would be removed from the game.

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Pokemon GO bug makes Niantic pull out Zorua's debut from the game

Zorua, the pre-evolution of Zoroark, had one of the most controversial debuts in Pokemon GO. Fans had been waiting quite a long time for its arrival before they finally got it and it was taken away so early. As part of the fox Pokemon’s debut, it disguised itself as the trainer's Buddy Pokemon, only revealing its true self after being encountered and defeated. With a power similar to Ditto's, it disguised itself as another Pocket Monster and was only revealed after being encountered.

Niantic's tweet about this issue states:

"Trainers, we are aware of a bug where Zorua, a Pokemon with a planned surprise encounter during October 25th's Shuppet Spotlight Hour, retains stats such as the height, CP, and attacks of the Pokemon it originally took on the form of."

The initial plan for this Pokemon was to only be available for the first and last five minutes of the Spotlight Hour before it was taken away because of a major bug in the system. This strange bug functioned in such a way that Zorua would keep the CP, height, and moveset of the Pokemon it was disguised as. As a result, Pokemon GO developers banned Zorua from being encountered, transferred to Pokemon HOME, being traded, or being used in-game.

This bug was the major reason Niantic pulled out Zorua’s debut from every region. Despite this bug, the Shuppet Spotlight Hour event continues and will continue as usual. There aren’t any other issues, but Pokemon GO players will not be able to encounter Zorua in any other region currently.

The Zorua debut ended in just hours of being started. Players who have already encountered the Pokemon might have a headstart when it returns to the platform, but this is just speculation for now. A tweet from Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) reads:

"The Zorua surprise that occurred in time zones including and prior to GMT+13 will not occur in time zones after we fix this. The Shuppet Spotlight Hour will still occur."

There is still no news about when Zorua will reappear on the platform, but as Pokemon GO is celebrating the 2022 Halloween event, players still have Mega Banette, Shiny Noibat, and Galarian Yamask to focus on. But this hasn’t stopped fans from voicing their dissatisfaction on social media. The game's subreddit was flooded with dissatisfied trainers giving their own two cents on the recent Zorua bug.

Trainers mostly expected the Zorua debut to have no issues since Niantic has increased the number of microtransactions in-game. The community was questioning the game's quality testers as all updates were reportedly checked before being released to the public. Although Zorua is currently banned from Pokemon GO, people will likely be able to obtain them sometime in the future.