‘Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’ patch is reportedly deleting save files

A new update for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, designed to fix a number of bugs, is reportedly causing players to lose their entire save files, according to Kotaku.

Many players have commented on Reddit that the update, taking the games up to Version 1.2.0, has led to them losing hundreds of hours of content when they connected to the Pokémon GO app or downloaded forthcoming DLC for Scarlet and Violet.

Other gamers have reported their game being corrupted, and one reportedly lost a selection of shiny Pokémon after purchasing the DLC.

The patch was announced in the 17 February Pokémon Presents livestream, in order to fix a litany of game-breaking bugs that existed in the original release. The game attracted much negative critical reception after its release for its bugginess, which manifested in absurd graphical issues that were often shared and mocked on social media.

There is seemingly not one singular cause of the save-corrupting bug.

Some players tried to contact Nintendo support to get their Pokémon back. Neither Nintendo nor The Pokémon Company have publicly acknowledged the bugs, although one support agent reportedly told a player that the publisher was “looking into it” before closing their ticket.

Another redditor’s customer service representative reportedly brought up the possibility of transferring Pokémon from their corrupted save onto Pokémon Home (an app that allows you to send your Pokémon to the cloud) once the compatibility launches.

One Reddit user who experienced the save error said that their copy was still playable when they created a new save file, a solution that they opted for out of fear that their original file might be deleted forever if they used it – the game would no longer recognise the corrupted save file.

The issue does not appear to be widespread at this moment in time. Kotaku reached out to ask Nintendo about whether or not a fix will be coming soon, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.