THE FUSE

Pokémon Champions is, for good or ill, the future of competitive Pokémon. The battle simulator launched this month and has been met with significant criticism for bugs, missing monsters and items, and a grindy, microtransaction-driven economy. Some of this was to be expected, as the free-to-play game needed some way to make money, and The Pokémon Company said the game wouldn’t include all 1025 monsters at launch. But even now, The Pokémon Company seems surprised by the level of backlash in some areas. So what does it all mean? Is the future of competitive play an already failed experiment, or is it another live-service game crash landing and hoping to rise from the ashes?