Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Bugs

Overview

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Bugs refers to the controversy surrounding the perceivably poor technical performance of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet upon their release in November 2022. Critics and players discussed and showcased bugs, including egregious lag, disappearing characters and Pokémon, janky animations and textures that "popped in," upon release. Many blamed the game's poor release state on the technical limitations of the Switch and GameFreak's strict three-year-development cycle for Pokémon games.

Background

Since the Pokémon series has moved to the Nintendo Switch, many players have bemoaned the games' poor technical performance on the console. This was particularly prevalent during Pokémon Sword and Shield,, the first mainline titles in the series history to not include all the Pokémon. Game Freak justified the decision by claiming they could instead work on "high-quality animations," leading to intense scrutiny of the game's technical performance.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released on November 18th, 2022, and commentary and discussion about the game's technical performance began appearing roughly one week earlier. On November 11th, 2022, Twitter user @GoldilocksP4 posted a video showcasing framerate drops and character "pop in," meaning when the game loads a feature late so that it appears to blink into existence, gaining six retweets and 40 likes in one week (shown below).

Pokemon Scarlet has major performance issues on the actual hardware and this is too funny. Running around in the world I get major frame drops. Entities just popping into existence. This is a joke pic.twitter.com/R6Oc5VNhi9

— Penten | Gold (@GoldilocksP4) November 11, 2022

Developments

Further alarming technical difficulties began appearing in the week before the games' release. On November 15th, 2022, The Pokémon Company released a final trailer ahead of the game's release.^[1] The trailer showcased how a trainer would eat in a sandwich-based minigame. The animation proved alarming to players. On November 16th, Twitter user @Starjeti (shown below) commented it was the "tackiest animation" they'd ever seen, highlighting the way the trainer "bites the air" and the "floating Pokémon in their idle animation."

This is the tackiest animation I have ever seen… the off kilter sandwich, whilst the trainer bites the air with no easing on the tweens…. the floating Pokemon in their idle animation staring at nothing😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/NFdclx8spT

— Starjeti (@Starjeti) November 16, 2022

On November 17th, Twitter user @Cherrim posted a video showing a very glitchy and laggy "catching Pokémon" animation that included harsh frame drops and pop-ins, gaining over 7,900 retweets and 76,000 likes in one day (shown below, top). The same day, streamer @Patterrz posted a clip of the player character's model improperly contorting as it rode a legendary Pokémon, gaining over 280 retweets and 2,900 likes in one day (shown below, bottom).

oof the reviews arent kidding about the terrible performance #PokemonScarletViolet #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/0oDvYQmMqV

— cherrim @ pkmn scarlet (@Cherrim) November 17, 2022

pokemon scarlet working perfectly as intended pic.twitter.com/8EpjbMtIHz

— Patterrz (@Patterrz) November 17, 2022

On November 17th, Japanese Twitter user @nagaisa_vzuki39 showcased a glitch in which the ridden Pokémon didn't appear at all, making the player character look as though they were levitating. The tweet gained over 7,700 retweets and 43,000 likes in one day (seen below).

ポケモンバグったんだがwww
私のミライドンどこいったw pic.twitter.com/Go4JroYPFn

— なぎさ🌽🚑🌸 🧪🎋 (@nagisa_Vzuki39) November 17, 2022

Kotaku published two articles about the games' poor technical performance, one^[2] a compilation of glitchy clips collected from Twitter and another^[3] discussing how the technical limitations of the Switch may have led to the games' poor launch-day performance.

Critics were similarly unable to ignore the technical failures of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. As of November 18th, the games have a score of 77/100 on Metacritic,^[4] but each review, from the most adulatory to the most critical, mentions the games' poor performance.

Search Interest

External References