Nintendo needs to do something about the racism in Pokémon HOME

This is the last thing anyone needs to see but we live in the bad place so of course it's happening.

Pokémon HOME has been out for less than a week and it's already turned into a garbage fire. No, not because people were asking for mythical Pokémon that couldn't be traded (and has since been patched) — it's because people are now naming their Pokémon after racial slurs. Because the world is awful.

One quick look on the global trading system (GTS) after searching for "Greninja" shows us three named after the n-word, presumably because it's shiny form is black instead of blue. I've also seen what I presume is the same person trying to trade similarly-named Greninja yesterday. I've attached an image of the aforementioned Pokémon, but censored the names.

It's difficult to tell how prevalent this issue is when millions of trades have taken place. Pokémon are listed on GTS practically every second, and it's impossible for a single person to catalogue them all. I haven't seen any widespread reports of others noticing this trend, but I can't be alone. I'd imagine there are a lot more, but no one else is saying anything. Let's not pretend like this may have just been one isolated incident when we all know how awful some people can be. People have already been trading hacked Pokémon with the sole purpose of crashing another person's Pokémon Sword and Shield game.

Pokémon has had its fair share of controversies in the past. Jynx's original design drew many comparisons to blackface, and that's only one of the most notable cases. The series is no stranger to racism.

I'm white, so I could never speak to the lived experience of having to deal with this personally. I'm just not targeted. But it needs to be called out regardless. There's no room to be neutral.

I doubt this is the first (and it certainly won't be the last) time people do this unless Pokémon employs some better filters and censors. It's absurd that companies like Pokémon and Nintendo, so obsessed with their family-friendly image, would let this slip through, especially given the history of both. We should at least be able to report players for ourselves, but there's no way to do that right now, unfortunately. If you happen to come across one of these Pokémon, your best option is to unfortunately ignore it until Nintendo gets involved.

Nintendo needs to fix this right away, because I can't deal with any more H.P. Lovecraft wannabes. This is disgusting. The world already has to deal with racist idiots in the real world and online, Pokémon doesn't need any of that.

Do better, Nintendo.

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