Hacking Pokemon Sun And Moon Could Result In You Losing Your Save, Get The Details

Pokemon Sun and Moon
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Some players trying to save their games in Pokemon Sun and Moon were running into some serious problems, with the game glitching and ruining the save files. Well, it turns out that hacking will do that to your game.

Polygon is reporting that various Pokemon Sun and Moon players have run into problems with their saved games. The characters wouldn't show up or it just wouldn't load, or the game would crash. Originally, some players were reporting that this was a native issue with the recently released Nintendo 3DS title. However, a little bit of digging, a little bit of prying, and an admission from the creator of a hacking tool revealed that Game Freak and the Pokemon Company had little or nothing to do with the saved game glitch, and that the issue was caused by an outdated hacking tool that they created.

The name of the tool is called PKHex, and it enables players to alter things like battle rates and player locations. The thing is, when players were using the hacking tool to alter the location of their character and then attempting to save the game, it was causing a mismatch in the way the data was being read by Pokemon Sun and Moon, and glitching the game out... causing crashes.

The developer of the hacking tool, Kurt -- who also goes by the handle of "Kaphotics" -- explained in a series of tweets on Twitter that the tool was causing the problems and that the glitches were based on players using an outdated version of the tool.

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Some people tried arguing it was a 3DS issue, but Kurt explained that the PKHex trainer was what was causing the issue. Polygon reached out to the trainer maker to get a more detailed explanation of what went down and why the PKHex causes the game to crash, and he explained to them via e-mail...

Basically, the game stores player coordinate data in fixed point (like decimal), [...] When the game loads, it plops your character on the overworld map at those coordinates. If the coordinates don't mesh with the map, the glitch occurs.

Messing around with the trainer and your location within Pokemon Sun and Moon is an easy way to take a trip to glitchville.

Polygon further reports that after Kurt "Kaphotics" explained what was going on and that the trainer was the cause of the issue, some players stepped forward to admit that it was indeed a glitch that occurred after they used the PKHex trainer.

In this particular instance, the developers were not to blame and the game was not funky. The problem was the trainer tool used to hex edit the location of the player-character and the mismatched data being sent to the game that caused Pokemon Sun and Moon to glitch and force some saved games to become unusable.

I'm sure there's an opportunity to squeeze in something about cheaters never prospering, but I think losing a saved game is enough punishment for the people who tried using the PKHex to get ahead in the game.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.