using only Metronome was a meaningful way of saying "with the way you guys fumbled this tournament, we might as well just have relied on luck and not our skills"
Even though the use of metronome was a very good way to represent the whole mess of preeliminaries, it was a huge risk for these 4 players to ridicule such a huge company. If TPC would have seen fit, the consequences could have been much worse for these 4 players.
Only embarrassing for them if they're killjoy control freaks! If it was run by people who love the game, they would applaud the absolute basedness. #NoFunAllowed #WhyDidTPCdoThis
that they had to cancel the finals means that their protest was a success, despite them losing their spot at worlds. if i was in their position where i beat the same 4-5 players 2 times in a row with best of 1 closed teamsheet, and THAT qualified me for worlds, i honestly wouldnt even mind. at least one of those 4 probably thought they didnt even earn a worlds spot considering how dog the original qualifiers were
@@autobotstarscream765exactly! Can you imagine how many people (who wouldn’t otherwise care) would tune in just to watch the Metronome spam? 😂 They take themselves way too seriously, and literally just cut off their nose to spite their face
The most disgusting thing about this whole issue is that TPC Korea cited inappropriate conduct or images as why these players were disqualified. That is the sort of thing that can come back in a background check or a google search down the line, and could genuinely cause loss of opportunity for the players in the future. It feels very intentional that, at a glance, a person could misunderstand what happened as genuine wrong doing by the players
yeah they made sure to make it sound as worse as possible. inappropriate conduct and harm to other players sounds SO SO SO much worse than "picked metronome because of bad ruling" lmao i honestly HATE this. i hate it so much. such scum behavior.
Thank you Wolfe, for shedding light on the issue. The informations you've discussed are all true and even the assumptions you've made were right. Other asian regions like Singapore and HK are also suffering from their respective terrible circuit this year, and I believe players deserve better. Let's hope this is the start of much better to come.
You guys are awesome! I would've never heard of the state of things over in Korea if you hadn't taken this risk, so I'm glad this is gaining traction. Let's hope your protest leads to a positive change for the community.
Okay, so: - Pokemon Korea runs an awful event and says that's going to be the format next year - Finalists all lock in Metronome-only - They are disqualified and the reason is obfuscated as long as possible, then they say "Don't protest us!" Sounds like Pokemon Korea is, uh, pretty awful. They have the power, but they're about the worst choice to wield it. Hopefully their leadership is chastised by TPC for this, as opposed to shutting down further event
It’s actually worse than Wolfey has made it seem. 5 days later, an article states that all the protesting players ended up getting perma-banned from the TPCK circuit. They can’t play in Korea anymore. Another reason said that there was collusion between the players and that hacked Pokémon were being used. You (Wolfey) even get a mention in the article for a tweet about TPCK not listening and essentially saying to players “shut up or face the consequences”. I do hope the disqualified players can somehow end up playing again, most likely in a different circuit as to avoid this cluster 🦆 of a format.
you didn't even touch on the fact that the listed reason is "inappropriate conduct or images" which on a background check makes you look like you belong on a list that gets you banned being near schools.
The funny thing is that I am sure that a surprise Metronome format would actually have made the finals pretty unique. Too bad sticks had to be up asses.
The general consensus(in Korean pokemon communities I am a part of that is, I'm Korean btw) is that the pokemon company korea ruined the tournament by rolling out a shitty format. The competition was an online best of 1 with closed team sheet, which is bad in several ways. 1. Some players took advantage of the relative anonymity that comes with an online tournament. They used multiple accounts/identities to fix matches or get more shots at getting top cut. The pokemon company says not to do this but they do not enforce this like at all. Either because they can't or won't, both situations are pretty bad in different ways rip. This isn't necessarily the company's fault but is still infuriating since this could have been prevented with in person tournaments. I think the fact that there are in person tournaments for the TCG as well as various pop up store events makes the lack of in person tournaments for vgc more pronounced, which makes people more angry(sure makes me angry). 2. Bo1 no team sheet is as wolfey says incredibly luck oriented. Also they technically fixed the issue where you fight the same player over and over again but due to the relatively low number of players(150), if you play as soon as you finish a game there was a not 0 chance of playing the same player again. 3. As with most of the world, the pokemon ip really got a boost during covid. This sparked a huge number of new pokemon related merch to be released in Korea and the TCG was so popular that products were sold out in seconds online. Even a child could see that the pokemon company was raking in money in Korea in recent years. The fact that this tournament was so buggy and so low effort made players think that the company didn't care about the players/consumers at all and only cared about making money
Could you please inform me of a decent community of Korean Pokemon players online? I've been in Korea for 3 years but haven't really engaged with the netizens. Looking to practice my Korean and maybe trade some 'mons :-)
Like you said, its really brave IMO. having a shot to be the best Pokemon player and to win a great tournament, but choosing to use that chance to bring up a problem is really awesome
The point about VGC being a "Marketing Expense" I completely agree with, same with TCG/Go etc.. Nintendo / TPC are notorious for not responding to any form of criticism and they just stay silent and ride it out. They don't feel like a game company anymore. It's all just run by lawyers and bean counters... There's no soul left in Pokemon.
Yeah. At a certain point I feel like higher ups at Nintendo and investors are going to HAVE to step in since in a bigger picture, Pokemon has probably one of the least healthy public relations images of a franchise even close to this scale, between delays, quality of product, and just general badness in pretty much every aspect of the franchise. It may still be a while but at a certain point your business starts losing value as customers fade off, the connection to the brand fades, and you open up room for competitors. You don't want to lose your biggest cash cow because of mismanagement and laziness and I think Pokemon has been going down that path for years now.
To be fair, Nintendo has little to do with the pokemon company nowadays. Official tournaments for VCG are purely ran by TPC, same with anything related to PTCG
It's crazy how moronic you are. You put the issues you have with the legal team on people who have nothing to do with said legal team. The companies aren't "run by lawyers." You nonce. Nevermind the fact that this issue has basically nothing to with Nintendo. It's a small part of TPC
If they've been known for poor public relations all along, then I would say it's not an issue of them losing "soul," rather it's a long existing problem that has become more obvious over time.
@@1stCallipostle yeah I think mons that already want to spam one attacking move like Fury Cutter do it but that strategy is so transparent that it's rare to begin with
I’m surprised TPCK is digging in their heels on a system that is so obviously bad. I would hope this leads to a change in both the leadership of TPCK, and the tournament format/organization in TPCK and TPCJ
It's insane that the pokemon co can run a tournament with prizes, disqualify a winner after a stage, and then refuse to explain why. Seems borderline illegal for them to not be transparent.
Sadly its the common way actually. Big companies like TPC can pretty much do everything regarding their tournaments and rules even without much communication.
I think scrapping the finals and banning the champs creates more publicity on how badly you messed up rather than just having finals with all Metronome.
Nintendo isn't even the sole owner of TPC, let alone TPC Korea. The Pokemon Company is owned by Creatures Inc., Game Freak, and Nintendo. The Pokemon Company (TPC for short) then owns it's subsidiarys TPC International, TPC Korea, etc.. In short you *not only* are blaming one company of three that have ownership of TPC. You are blaming one that is *twice removed* from this situation. This is the sorta the equivalent of blaming Microsoft for Doom's Developers screwing over Mick Gordan but even worse.
I actually heard about the issues with the Japan tournament from Taiwanese players who also faced the same issues and were unhappy as well. All 3 tournaments used the same format with the same bugs and caused a lot of unnecessary hassle. TPC Taiwan also sent out in person event invites 3 days prior to the actual event, which led to many people not even seeing the email in time to respond or prepare let alone travel. Now hearing about the issues in Korea too it seems that TPC subsidiaries in Pacific Asia are really mismanaged and disrespectful towards players and dismissive of their concerns, which is really disappointing and saddening.
If TPC care so much about their brand image, they NEED to learn from this past year. Buggy and unfinished game, multiple on-stream issues with the game, and now the whole Asian Circuit is busted because of the game's issues and the response has been either awful or a mixed bag. I wouldn't be surprised if more protests happen, especially if more issues arise AND Worlds just happens to be in Japan this year, creating the perfect opportunity to make the Korean, Japanese, and other Asian player's feelings known, without a doubt, to Big Pika.
Combined with the sudden change in regulation, I have a feeling this is the most controversies they'll have in a long time. If this doesn't spark changes nothing will. On that note an eastern company having better NA support might be a new one.
Good on the players for their solidarity with Blue (was that his name?). Disqualifying a player without a reason given is an awful way to treat someone, let alone one of the top Korean players. I respect them for taking a stand together, rather than trying to make a gain from another player being disqualified without a reason.
@@JACpotatos rule 5.4.43 says you aren't allowed to determine the match by random means. If you and your opponent only use metronome, the only factor is luck and not skill.
@@carquest3748 tbh.... There's very little skill involved in Pokemon anyways with all the RNG. The most important part is just making a team. Even with metronome, your team is going to play a fairly big role.
Pokémon better not mess up French nationals. We’d be looking at more than a metronome protest, that’s for sure - Definitely gonna see full guillotine teams
Thanks for raising this issue, really appreciate it. I am a new SEA VGC player who got into VGC in S/V because of content creators such as you, and managed to make it through the preliminary rounds. However, so much is left to be desired of the qualification format. An online event + BO1 + single elimination means all the prep work done can simply be undone very quickly due to poor RNG, poor matchups and not necessarily by skill. Also, being purely online means should you exit early, there's really nothing else to do e.g. interact with other like-minded ppl, enjoy the atmosphere etc. And if TPC really wants to grow the Asia VGC community, I think getting like minded people from across Asia to interact with each other in-person will really go a long way in achieving this goal. Given how terrible the format is, plus the tournament was actually in conflict with my real-life commitments, it was an easy decision for me to withdraw prior to the tournament on Saturday. I just hope this incident do shine a light on how inferior the qualification format is for Asian VGC players, and hope there is an improvement to the format post-Yokohama. (i.e. in-person events across Asia)!
Same here~ I'm from Malaysia and was qualified for the Malaysia Regional Championship on 3rd June, went through the preliminaries at Top 16. However, I was shocked to note that its BO1 + Single Elimination + closed team sheet for such big official event for Malaysians. To make things worse, I woke up very early morning (7am) in order to go to a location that has better and stable internet connection, so that I would not have to worry about disconnection shenanigan, just because the organizer said that the briefing would start at 9am and the tournament at 10am. However, the 1st round of the tournament keep delaying and I'm only able to start 1st round at 12pm, which is ridiculous and unbelievable. And waiting while doing nothing during those 5 hours is mentally exhausting to me, which in the end I lose the 1st round. Seeing all these Korea & Taiwan VGC bullshits that could be avoided if TPC had done their job properly, while in Malaysia there's no sign or lack of support over Korean or VGC fellow players really make my passion towards VGC and competitive tournament spiraling down fast
Yeah even in PH that best of 1 single elimination shit really shows how they underestimate SEA. But they don't even know, we are only held back by the lack of pokemon events in SEA, but if we get the same treatment as the other countries, we already have a world champion in SEA by now.
Meanwhile in SEA we are having bo1 online single elimination tournament. On top of that, we were given last minute announcement regarding the application and the format of the event via email,(the last email was sent at 9pm before the tour and we were required to reply before 12am), which caused multiple players to miss out the registration. Not to mention the responses from their side regarding the format were also inconsistent .Some players were told that the format will be conducted in OTS but in fact it was CTS, causing such disadvantages in teambuilding. It's a shame that that's the ONLY chance we have to qualify for World
Same here~ I'm from Malaysia and was qualified for the Malaysia Regional Championship on 3rd June, went through the preliminaries at Top 16. However, I was shocked to note that its BO1 + Single Elimination + closed team sheet for such big official event for Malaysians. To make things worse, I woke up very early morning (7am) in order to go to a location that has better and stable internet connection, so that I would not have to worry about disconnection shenanigan, just because the organizer said that the briefing would start at 9am and the tournament at 10am. However, the 1st round of the tournament keep delaying and I'm only able to start 1st round at 12pm, which is ridiculous and unbelievable. And waiting while doing nothing during those 5 hours is mentally exhausting to me, which in the end I lose the 1st round. Seeing all these Korea & Taiwan VGC bullshits that could be avoided if TPC had done their job properly, while in Malaysia there's no sign or lack of support over Korean or VGC fellow players really make my passion towards VGC and competitive tournament spiraling down fast
@@wyattakatsuki891022 Yeap if you are not capable of hosting a tournament just hand it back to TPCI, I'm pretty sure the players will be more willing to pay for a overpriced entry and travelling fees than a shitty structure and management.
I have several Korean friends, and they have all expressed their anger about this situation to me. I like to think pokemon really cares about their community a lot and wouldn't do something like this, this is certainly the most extreme thing I've ever seen. If it's something that just Nintendo would do, that makes more sense. But it being just Game Freak without any Nintendo interference doesn't feel right.
I think you severally overestimate how much gamefreak cares about their community. Legends of Arceus still looks like its 2015 game even though it came out in 2022 lol
@@wunderpuma4453 I agree with your first sentence, but the second sentence in my opinion doesn’t support it. You’re acting like a more significant portion of a game’s value is its graphics than it really is, and no game proves this better than S/V wich in some markets still hold the fastest selling switch title over tears of the kingdom. And you assert that game freak not putting their all into this particular element is indicative of how much they care about their audience when that’s far from the most likely cause of the issue->rushing a brand new gameplay format out by a hard deadline. So you really invalidated your own comment, at least for me.
@@wunderpuma4453 The truth is we don’t actually have a good estimate of how much game freak as a company culture and leadership culture cares about their fans. Because whatever they do will always be limited by the Pokémon company. What we do have is a good estimate of how the Pokémon company values the consistent quantity of gamefreak’s outputs over their quality. The subject of this video-competitive pokemon governance-should not start with discussion about game releases because it truly is different and I would like to keep the shallow “pokemon games bad gamefreak bad” without deeper analysis, out of this.
Maybe we as fans should look for more ways to include Metronome into more of our continued complaints with Pokémon as a whole. As Wolfe said, Metronome is a classy way to protest, and I'd argue it's very fitting for most issues we face. The concept of Metronome is fun! But more often than not it results in unfavorable or arguably neutral (at best) results. Metronome is one thing when it's an occasional tactic. But when all you have is the unreliability inherent to Metronome, it can get extremely frustrating incredibly quick. It just doesn't work if you don't take some time approach Pokémon in a different way. It can't be the primary way you engage with Pokémon. There's so many other fantastic ways to enjoy Pokémon, but many of them are more-or-less impossible if you insist on Metronome as the key experience. Replace "Metronome" with "having core Pokémon games come out quickly" and I think that mostly lines up with the experience of many Pokémon fans. How many people have said Game Freak needs to take an extra year or two so they can breathe? Even from a more financial angle, a lot of the key components of Pokémon's success (like, say, the actual creature designs) come directly from the people there, so it's important to not suffocate them. Returning to the original point, if we as fans are able to make Metronome a symbol of our discontents, I believe we could make good use of it. Clefairy was one of the original candidates to be Pokémon's mascot, so surely TPC would recognize the significance if we were to make it the face of disgruntled older fans, tired of the increasing number of ways Metronome can conjure up trouble.
The disconnection issue is absurd. I played in the Philippine qualifiers and I had experienced disconnections, both from me due to my bad internet and the opponent. The disconnection would either count it as my loss or not count it at all, never favorable to me, which is annoying. I've had like 2 out of those 10 games where I was winning and the game disconnected, leading to a no-win count.
I was a player in the tcg many many moons ago (circa 2008-2012). One of the big reasons that Pokémon held and still holds such a prominent spot in my heart and life is how the player base is so supportive and most of the time very healthy. Seeing things like this protest makes me very happy, because even the top players are still fighting to try to enjoy the game, even with pretty major stakes. Players acting like this is why competitive Pokémon is such a major deal and why it is continuing to grow. I hope that the community is and continues to be as welcoming and positive as I remember it being all those years ago.
Coming from an Australian PTCG player, I really hope it gets better for you guys playing over in Japan & Korea. Had the pleasure of meeting some great people at OCE Internationals this year so hoping you guys see some improvement
In the South East Asia tournaments, it’s even worse because of how TPC does their online tournaments. People can literally cheat their way because of the Disconnection rule in which if an opponent disconnects, they can play the game again until a 2nd disconnect or sth like that, it’s so bad that despite players providing evidence of opponent’s disconnecting on purpose, TPC still allows them to play…
if tpc refuses to hold events or treat players with respect because people call them out for their mistakes, or if they refuse to fix a broken system that they've chosen to have responsibility for, tell all the korean players to come play showdown because smogon actually care about their players and do everything they can to create an accessible platform for people all over the world to enjoy playing competitive pokemon together
It's getting to the point where the only way to save Pokémon may be to pirate/emulate and hack all Pokémon games. Kotaku had it backwards, buy Zelda and Metroid Dread while saving your money for them by pirating all of Pokémon's games and boycotting official purchases of (at least) the main series. 🏴☠️ #WhyDidTPCdoThis #MakePokemonGreatAgain #EmulateAllPokemonGames
This comment has to be a joke. Showdown isn't legit, and why would anyone play a format where over a dozen Pokemon are banned from use. Rapid Strike Urshifu is a problem? Like get real.
@martonyomchale342 This is what Smogonites actually believe, also that Weather (especially Rain) is OP, so ofc a Rain sweeper that breaks all anti-sweep defenses with Rain-boosted multi-hits got banned.
@@autobotstarscream765 No. I'm a mono-Water player. I've used Rapid Strike Urshifu since gen 8. Soft set for Jolly female and everything. I need two turns of set up with bulk up to sweep and sometimes I got walled. And then you have Pokemon that are special sweepers and outspeed. Those are the breaks. Even with Swords Dance and TailBlaze I can still be swept, or outspeed. Those are the breaks. I don't call for Amongus, Rillaboom, or Regieleki to be banned because they stop my mono water team. I just say those are the breaks and adapt.
@martonyomchale342 Mono-Water is different from a normal Rain team though, I feel like monotype is more skillful in general whereas normal Rain is gonna do stuff like use the Amoonguss to stall with the help of the Rain mitigating one of its weaknesses.
To be fair it's always the Korean branch of Game companies that tend to have the worst response to any mess-ups on their end, not stereotyping but they tend to prove their own track records having a zero tolerance policy towards players who speak out against unfavorable actions that would negatively impact the community as a whole. That's just my two cents on it seeing what happening now and what has already happened in the years prior.
Not sure why I'm getting this a year late, but this should have resulted in a lawsuit, and those running the tournament should have lost. This video says they're within their legal right, however if you've already won a prize in a tournament (trip + travel setup are examples), then at least in US law even a private company (or single person) can't deny the prize without a good reason. It's one of several reasons Mr. Beast is in trouble. "You broke no rules but we don't like what you did so we're banning you anyway" would not be legit.
Wolfe, your videos are amazing. I find competitive battle strategy and your Pokémon knowledge so interesting but I never have battled competitively and have no idea of rules. You are by FAR the best TH-camr explaining competitive battling. You could talk about white paint and make it something I learn from. Thanks for the awesome content that actually brings value to the viewer!
Other than Japan and Korea, other Asia region did not have it going well neither, nearly every announcement TPC made were so late that we dont have enough time to register, some confirming email is even all gibberish, nobody knows what is TPC doing...
Singapore has also had issues over the past weekend, I've heard similar stories from SEA friends about people abusing disconnects to rig matches. It's really depressing honestly, we deserve so much better :(
I wasn’t aware the divisions of The Pokémon Company operated so differently from one another. I had assumed that on a global scale the standards and rules of tournaments would be the same, especially with Worlds itself being held under The Pokémon Company International’s rules. I wonder if that’s why Worlds has never been held in Japan until this year? In any case I’m really proud of those players. Risking everything to stand up for their competitor because they knew it wasn’t right. I hope the bylaws of tournaments get changed so there can be no disqualification without an explanation. Otherwise they could DQ people for nothing, or to make sure their favorite to win (presumably for advertising reasons) gets the champion title.
It's not really a surprise that those divisions operate independently. In Yu-Gi-Oh (Konami-owned), they not only have different standards and formats for tournaments, they have separate release schedules for new sets, and most importantly separate banlists between the TCG (International) and OCG (Japan, Korea, some other parts of East Asia). And that's not a difference of a card or two, it's an entirely different philosophy of game balance. And apparently their World Championship uses a third special banlist that basically becomes some weird mix of both official banlists.
Bonus wolfie content id my favorite content because its usually just how it is, straight up facts and thoughts. I hope TPC steps up their game, in VGC ruling AND game development.
25:13 I don't think TPC can just stop the tournaments, as those are what keeps the core player base engaged in the long run. No tournaments = no competitive scene = no promotional content = no casual interest. Even if they keep the merchandise sales as high as they are, they'll loose a lot of customers in the worst way (aka, pissing them off so hard they'll never return), and seeing how the anime is doing, they really can't afford that.
you overestimate the power or numbers of the core playerbase or competitive scene. In every video game, the competitive scene is generally a very small minoritiy and an insignificant part of the size and revenue of the company itself.
@@hanszimmer2412 You underestimate the power competitive scenes have on any activity. You think the sports we have would be nearly as popular if they didn't have massive casual followings for the competitive scene? I'm talking about everything from basketball with the NBA to League with its LCS. The interest in competitive scenes even from casual players is absolutely what drives a lot of sales lol
@@scoutbane1651 First off, you definitely make a mistake there comparing competitive video games to classic sports. The number of competitive players plus the people interested in the competitive scene is a very small part of any video games size and revenue. The gain from tournaments and associated competitive players and the following advertisement is not even 1% of TPC. Professional esport athletes or popular gamers get banned and disqualified left and right across many different video games without much repercussion for the companies itself. And concerning classic sports: even FIFA could demand the ban of Christiano Ronaldo without batting an eye if they see fit, because it would have zero impact in the end.
@@hanszimmer2412 Don't move the goalposts. You said the entire competitive scene is insignificant to the sale and size of the company. That's the point I'm disputing. I never said banning these players will make an effect on their size, but cancelling the entire competitive sphere abso-fucking-lutely would and you're just delusional if you think otherwise honestly. Even just Wolfe has 1 million subs. A single competitive player, talking about competitive. You think that doesn't affect sales or player retention? Lmfao. Obviously the two fuel each other.
@@hanszimmer2412 so why would company spend money and run the scene all around the globe mind you if it was useless smartass they don't want to waste money they want to make money
“Harmful to other players or offensive images.” Oh so tpc just made it 2000x harder for these players to get jobs that looks HORRIBLE to an interviewer.
And unfortunately, Koreans are not as litigeous as USAers, who would have grounds to sue over that being given as a public descriptor for defamation of character.
It's funny to me that they were concerned about their brand image over this. There are probably two types of people: people who are way too far down the rabbit hole to just give up on pokemon over a player protest, and people who never would have heard of this lol. And of the people who care about this, the response only makes their brand look worse than the protest. If these tournaments exist to get people invested in Pokemon, an image of a community supported by a company that listens and maximizes enjoyment would be the way to do it. "Our consumers disagree with what we made for them, so we silenced them" isn't a mantra that makes me want to invest in a brand lol
This sounds like a bad situation all around. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the devs and tournament organizers who allowed the build to pass QA and who proceeded with the tournament despite the setup not working correctly. Thanks for covering the situation, especially for those of us that don't follow the scene on social media.
Devs have absolutely no responsibility in such companies! If the manager says, RELEASE NOW, any dev either pushes the current version to live, or is fired, and his replacements first job is to push the current version live, never even hearing or knowing why the last dev didn't push it live immediately... If Devs have the right to be responsible, they'll push back the release until they're done, regardless of what promises the mamager made with no plan.
This type of protesting really needs to happen during Worlds for TPC to care. I have to admit that Metronome's animation being used as the closest thing to a middle finger is very clever, but they could take it a step further and there are many things they could use to protest. Justified ability on all Pokémon + useless moves. Especially Lucario, since it gets Justified and Metronome. Having something like Helping Hand or Uproar as the only move. Also, any Pokémon that cannot learn Metronome, can still hold the Metronome item. Having just one move, that is also counterproductive, such as Heal Pulse. Fun strategies such as Funbro could get their chance to shine here. Trick or Switcheroo as the only move, while holding the Metronome item.
Not being into the competitive Pokémon scene at all, I had no idea until 2:39 that this had anything to do with Pokémon and the move Metronome and only clicked on this video to see how Korean players (of some unknown game) got disqualified for the use of an actual metronome, a device used for keeping tempo by producing an audible click at regular intervals 😶
Just clicked on this video for exactly this reason 💀 I thought it was some kind of rhythm or osu-like game and they were using a metronome computer program... Oops lol
Lol I love how you explain things. It's basically the same way i do to try to get people to understand and you nail that bro!! Please keep pumping out content all your stuff is a totally hit in my opinion!!!!?
This is what happened in a summary -IRL tournaments cancelled in favor of (uncompetitive) Bo1 online matches -Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off -Qualifiers are unplayable due to horrific glitches in the actual game -TPC rescinds earned placements -Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off -Replacement ladder keeps uncompetitive rulesets (best of 1, no tera preview, when the rest of the world gets best of 3 with tera preview) and is cheesed with alt accounts due to lack of screening and low reqs -Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off -All four day 2 players agree to only teach all of their Pokemon Metronome, to protest how poorly organized Korean VGC is -All players are disqualified and Trainer's Cup is cancelled
Thanks Wolfey. I might not have gotten away with the exact info I wanted (what about the move was illegal), but I still came out with some understanding of the situation.
@@Gettenhart you’re literally just wrong. It’s pokemon company korea. the people shutting down your emulators are literally hours away and dont have fucking anything to do with vgc. They just share stock. This is basic knowledge.
Just some advice for first time viewers like me who stuble here from reccomended videos you should specify in what game or competition you're talking about in the first 5 seconds itll be a lot easier to follow the topic! Anyway I quite enjoyed this video and might start watching your content if I enjoy the next one I click on from ya :3
What? This is ridiculous, metronome is 100% based on luck for it to work and why the hell did they get banned for using a move that relies entirely with luck?
Because it was done in protest, which is negative to the company's image. And apparently there were subtle messages with "wagging finger," which I'll say... 'interpret it as you will' Honestly, it was a "pick your poison" scenario. And disqualifying the players, especially in this manner, was going to be a gamble on whether it would be accepted or not. Unfortunately for them, it was basically a guaranteed fail because the internet talks
This whole situation is a perfect example of why the idea of the "perfect protestor" is nonexistent. Just as Wolfey said, the finalists could have loudly protested in more meaningful ways that would have drawn more negative publicity to TPC, but instead chose to protest "appropriately," more tongue-in-cheek than genuine protest. But Nintendo decides what is appropriate, and so an appropriate protest cannot happen. Three months later these four players have a lifetime ban from competitive Pokemon, no apology from the company, and have not enacted meaningful change in the Korean competitive scene. Whatever brief awareness the community had of their sacrifice has been snuffed out by Nintendo's assertions that they were hacking. I see this as a lesson that if you are going to protest in a scenario where even the mildest form of protesting will be met with the most severe punishment, then the point of your protest should be as disruptive as possible to the status quo. Otherwise you will be quietly swept away, your cause will be left nowhere, and if you're lucky you might at least be acknowledged for protesting "appropriately."
Honestly the thing that pisses me off most is that we lost out on seeing a hilarious tournament where everyone just uses Metronome lol. I think it was risky of TPC to disqualify them for protesting though. I remember when Blitzchung (the Hearthstone player from Hong Kong) had his winnings taken away from him and was banned because he protested against China's abuse of Hong Kong during a tournament. That caused, probably one of the biggest boycotts a game company has ever seen. I don't know the exact numbers but I'm pretty sure thousands if not tens of thousands of people stopped playing Blizzard games, they lost tons of WoW subs including Mark Kern who was once a team leader for Blizzard on World of Warcraft, cancelled his subscription to his own game. They had staff at Blizzard HQ walk out in protest. Brian Kibler refused to cast the Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament, as well as many other casters. Mitsubishi even cancelled their e-sports sponsorship to Blizzard. This happened almost 4 years ago and Blizzard back-tracked most of their decisions within a week yet I'm pretty sure Blizzard STILL hasn't recovered from it.
Blizzard's had an actual sex scandal exposed out here and they still are doing better than ever from that. Lets be real here surprised pikachu face pfp.
@@JayceCH. Better than ever? I'm not sure about that. Better than the height of WoW's popularity? Better than before they got bought out by another company? Better than when they actually had an e-sports scene? I mean come on, there are 7 games on my Blizzard launcher and aside from OW2 and the small handful of people I know still playing WoW I don't know anyone who plays SC2 or D3 or even Hearthstone any more.
Only stat boosting with no baton pass and the like, and no pokemon that can DPS would be seen a throwing the match, so that would have been penalized severely. Unless there was some way of getting struggle to work or forcing a struggle, but that would have to be shown as a viable tactic somewhere else first or they'd assume match fixing
I’ve only just started this video, but with how fumbled it sounds, looking back, it seems like 2023 was just a cursed year for competitive given all that happened at actual Worlds
Heya, just a thing to consider, you might want to add more context up front, in the title even potentially. I get that this sort of content is aimed at a very specific audience, but as a person who isn't familiar with this channel and consumes mostly pokémon unrelated content, it took me quite a while to figure out what we were even talking about - for the first few minutes I assumed we're talking about musicians because nothing explicitly pokémon related came up until then I understand that this is to a big part a skill issue, but consider being mindful of that in the future as it can be a barrier to entry for new viewers ^^' Great video regardless tho!
They should have all included metronome in their moves along with 3 other normal moves. That way they might have gotten in and then just agreed to only pick metronome during the tournament.
I'm a band nerd and thought some Korean band got disqualified in a competition for having a metronome in their ear while they performed and I was so confused.
Seems like the korean pokemon company is just compounding their issues further and further rather than just stepping up and dealing with their initial shortcomings, i just feel bad for the players who have lost opportunities when they did nothing wrong. Also i feel like people would've been stoked to see an all metronome masters round, i know i would tune in to see how the best players in my region use crazy strategies, just seems like a loss all around.
The players were only top 4 because of luck on that ladder, based on that description of how it was run. Having only Metronome for the final bracket is actually the most accurate way to determine the winner.
Shout out to Kaphotics who has been a toxic voice in making stupid genning arguments even though that has nothing to do with this situation. We need to have a conversation about how some of the community is just as nasty and unsupportive.
Make the games have some kind of feature where you can "generate" or I guess "train" your Pokémon in game to have specific EV/IV and moves in exchange for some kinda in game currency and this issue disappears overnight
@Domin0us and that's where I'm at too. His recent tweets and Reddit posts over the weekend show that all he cares about is his moral superiority complex. A mismatched memory or OT has absolutely nothing to do with this. He never should've even said anything bc now I can't take his outcries in good faith
They are an absolute hypocritical clown with a holier than thou attitude making/contributing to PKhex while also shitting on people who use it. Honestly, they are just interested in making drama and attention seeking. Literally one of the most vile people in the Pokemon community.
Kaphotics is right to make chaos for TPC, the EA of Pokémadden. At this point, it may be time to drop from all irreparably broken official Game FrEAk Pokémadden official competition, and pirate/emulate and hack all Pokémon games while moving competitive play to Showdown!, run by Smogon, who cares about the fans and competitive balance more than Game FrEAk Sports (It's Not In The Game!) _ever_ will. #WhyDidTPCdoThis #MakePokemonGreatAgain #EmulateAllPokemonGames #EmulationIsTheAnswer #EmulationIsTheFuture
using only Metronome was a meaningful way of saying "with the way you guys fumbled this tournament, we might as well just have relied on luck and not our skills"
Even though the use of metronome was a very good way to represent the whole mess of preeliminaries, it was a huge risk for these 4 players to ridicule such a huge company. If TPC would have seen fit, the consequences could have been much worse for these 4 players.
Our *genned pokemon 😂😂😂
@@AB-ee5tbah yeah, because you can gen pokemon anytime you see fit within a tournament. Super smart
@@AB-ee5tb What?
@@hanszimmer2412 Why? There was never any ban on using Metronome.
Wolfey needs to hold a Metronome only tournament in solidarity.
It would be fun, but he probably couldn't do it without risking his future in competitive pokemon.
@@jasonkeith2832 i think wolfey brings way more brand value to comp pokemon then anyone else
but also its tpc so they are the stupidest mfs in gaming
I will do the metronome only battles,I will just have to get a lot of Pokémon who can learn metronome
hosting this on april fools day would be amazing lol
@@noinfo1018 Dunkey could have said the same thing for Riot and he was permabanned
man it sure would be a shame if more players started using metronome teams to protest against the ways tpc divisions manage their awful systems.
imagine the whole worlds just became a metronome battle
@@nb_oovanboi7750 That would be goofy af but tbh i would love to see that
@@nb_oovanboi7750 there should actually be like a fun tournament where people just use metronome
@@DefaultnoobismePeople (including Wolfe) have actually already done that:
th-cam.com/video/SRRLbfP_nO4/w-d-xo.html
@@Defaultnoobisme There already has been lol wolfey did one in gen 8. Or at least participated I dont really remember tbh
It would have been extremely embarrassing for TPC if their grand finals was a protest metronome battle. Big respect for the players.
Only embarrassing for them if they're killjoy control freaks! If it was run by people who love the game, they would applaud the absolute basedness.
#NoFunAllowed
#WhyDidTPCdoThis
that they had to cancel the finals means that their protest was a success, despite them losing their spot at worlds. if i was in their position where i beat the same 4-5 players 2 times in a row with best of 1 closed teamsheet, and THAT qualified me for worlds, i honestly wouldnt even mind. at least one of those 4 probably thought they didnt even earn a worlds spot considering how dog the original qualifiers were
As a spectator it would've been so fun to watch through. It's not everyday you get to see gimmicky team in the finals. At least as far as I remember
@@autobotstarscream765exactly! Can you imagine how many people (who wouldn’t otherwise care) would tune in just to watch the Metronome spam? 😂
They take themselves way too seriously, and literally just cut off their nose to spite their face
Reminds me of the "Free Melee" when Splatoon players wouldn't let it die to where they had to cancel the tourney
The most disgusting thing about this whole issue is that TPC Korea cited inappropriate conduct or images as why these players were disqualified. That is the sort of thing that can come back in a background check or a google search down the line, and could genuinely cause loss of opportunity for the players in the future. It feels very intentional that, at a glance, a person could misunderstand what happened as genuine wrong doing by the players
Yeah that's just life.
Happens in anything remotely political all the time.
yeah they made sure to make it sound as worse as possible. inappropriate conduct and harm to other players sounds SO SO SO much worse than "picked metronome because of bad ruling" lmao i honestly HATE this. i hate it so much. such scum behavior.
The word for that is Corruption.
@@newp0rt i agree
@@newp0rt *as BAD as possible
"worse" is a comparison word
Thank you Wolfe, for shedding light on the issue.
The informations you've discussed are all true and even the assumptions you've made were right.
Other asian regions like Singapore and HK are also suffering from their respective terrible circuit this year, and I believe players deserve better.
Let's hope this is the start of much better to come.
We all hope with you!!!
Hope so too tbh
As an fellow asian player i feel you man
❤
You guys are awesome! I would've never heard of the state of things over in Korea if you hadn't taken this risk, so I'm glad this is gaining traction. Let's hope your protest leads to a positive change for the community.
Okay, so:
- Pokemon Korea runs an awful event and says that's going to be the format next year
- Finalists all lock in Metronome-only
- They are disqualified and the reason is obfuscated as long as possible, then they say "Don't protest us!"
Sounds like Pokemon Korea is, uh, pretty awful. They have the power, but they're about the worst choice to wield it.
Hopefully their leadership is chastised by TPC for this, as opposed to shutting down further event
Looking at how riot Korea is, I'm not hopeful at all
this is such a shitshow I expected kespa to be involved
Yep, sounds like Korea. Hypocrisy upon dictatorship.
Korea takes saving face very seriously, so this probably won’t help them much
we go to the same college
It would be more fun to see Metronome in worlds than Regieleki clicking Electroweb
Agreed
Or Flutter Mane tapping Moonblast.
Based
@Hunter dude they were joking
@Hunter hey, I love seeing weird shit win.
Like when that one guy brought an Empoleon to worlds and won.
It’s actually worse than Wolfey has made it seem. 5 days later, an article states that all the protesting players ended up getting perma-banned from the TPCK circuit. They can’t play in Korea anymore. Another reason said that there was collusion between the players and that hacked Pokémon were being used. You (Wolfey) even get a mention in the article for a tweet about TPCK not listening and essentially saying to players “shut up or face the consequences”. I do hope the disqualified players can somehow end up playing again, most likely in a different circuit as to avoid this cluster 🦆 of a format.
i'm giggling at "cluster duck"
clusterduck
you didn't even touch on the fact that the listed reason is "inappropriate conduct or images"
which on a background check makes you look like you belong on a list that gets you banned being near schools.
They not only banned them but tried to make them look bad for simply protesting. That is beyond delusional.
The funny thing is that I am sure that a surprise Metronome format would actually have made the finals pretty unique. Too bad sticks had to be up asses.
Some Pokémon are beasts with Metronome, TPCK are just Mega Ultra _Haters._ #WhyDidTPCdoThis #MakePokemonGreatAgain #NoFunAllowed
The general consensus(in Korean pokemon communities I am a part of that is, I'm Korean btw) is that the pokemon company korea ruined the tournament by rolling out a shitty format. The competition was an online best of 1 with closed team sheet, which is bad in several ways.
1. Some players took advantage of the relative anonymity that comes with an online tournament. They used multiple accounts/identities to fix matches or get more shots at getting top cut. The pokemon company says not to do this but they do not enforce this like at all. Either because they can't or won't, both situations are pretty bad in different ways rip. This isn't necessarily the company's fault but is still infuriating since this could have been prevented with in person tournaments.
I think the fact that there are in person tournaments for the TCG as well as various pop up store events makes the lack of in person tournaments for vgc more pronounced, which makes people more angry(sure makes me angry).
2. Bo1 no team sheet is as wolfey says incredibly luck oriented. Also they technically fixed the issue where you fight the same player over and over again but due to the relatively low number of players(150), if you play as soon as you finish a game there was a not 0 chance of playing the same player again.
3. As with most of the world, the pokemon ip really got a boost during covid. This sparked a huge number of new pokemon related merch to be released in Korea and the TCG was so popular that products were sold out in seconds online. Even a child could see that the pokemon company was raking in money in Korea in recent years. The fact that this tournament was so buggy and so low effort made players think that the company didn't care about the players/consumers at all and only cared about making money
Could you please inform me of a decent community of Korean Pokemon players online? I've been in Korea for 3 years but haven't really engaged with the netizens. Looking to practice my Korean and maybe trade some 'mons :-)
I imagine that the Pokémon Company Korea is run by someone related to Kim Jong-Un.
@@candyneige6609 wrong Korea
@@theapexsurvivor9538 Actually, it's the correct one.
@@candyneige6609What are you smoking and can I have some??
Like you said, its really brave IMO. having a shot to be the best Pokemon player and to win a great tournament, but choosing to use that chance to bring up a problem is really awesome
#WhyDidTPCdoThis
No, the brave part is that it risks losing official sponsored VGC events for Korea.
The point about VGC being a "Marketing Expense" I completely agree with, same with TCG/Go etc..
Nintendo / TPC are notorious for not responding to any form of criticism and they just stay silent and ride it out.
They don't feel like a game company anymore. It's all just run by lawyers and bean counters...
There's no soul left in Pokemon.
Yeah. At a certain point I feel like higher ups at Nintendo and investors are going to HAVE to step in since in a bigger picture, Pokemon has probably one of the least healthy public relations images of a franchise even close to this scale, between delays, quality of product, and just general badness in pretty much every aspect of the franchise. It may still be a while but at a certain point your business starts losing value as customers fade off, the connection to the brand fades, and you open up room for competitors. You don't want to lose your biggest cash cow because of mismanagement and laziness and I think Pokemon has been going down that path for years now.
To be fair, Nintendo has little to do with the pokemon company nowadays. Official tournaments for VCG are purely ran by TPC, same with anything related to PTCG
Nintendo is one third of the Pokémon Company…
It's crazy how moronic you are. You put the issues you have with the legal team on people who have nothing to do with said legal team. The companies aren't "run by lawyers." You nonce. Nevermind the fact that this issue has basically nothing to with Nintendo. It's a small part of TPC
If they've been known for poor public relations all along, then I would say it's not an issue of them losing "soul," rather it's a long existing problem that has become more obvious over time.
As a musician I was really confused at first until I remembered that Metronome is not only a device to keep a steady tempo but also a Pokemon move.
It's also a battle item that nobody uses even on gimmick sets.
since the thumbnail and title were not pokemon related I thought people were using metronomes to time inputs for combos in some fighting game
@@Pablo360ableI mean if Fury Cutter was 100% accurate...
@@Pablo360ableI feel like it's seen usage on a couple mons over time, but that might just be in singles
@@1stCallipostle yeah I think mons that already want to spam one attacking move like Fury Cutter do it but that strategy is so transparent that it's rare to begin with
I’m surprised TPCK is digging in their heels on a system that is so obviously bad. I would hope this leads to a change in both the leadership of TPCK, and the tournament format/organization in TPCK and TPCJ
Won't happen, riot Korea is equally brain dead
You think they care?
It's insane that the pokemon co can run a tournament with prizes, disqualify a winner after a stage, and then refuse to explain why. Seems borderline illegal for them to not be transparent.
Sadly its the common way actually. Big companies like TPC can pretty much do everything regarding their tournaments and rules even without much communication.
It's a japanese company, the companies there aren't transparent at all lmao
Corporations doing something illegal? They make the laws, nothing they do is illegal. Sad but true.
They make the laws and rules and players accept them ;)
@@hanszimmer2412 I don’t think this is a good example of that as the other players protested against it .
I think scrapping the finals and banning the champs creates more publicity on how badly you messed up rather than just having finals with all Metronome.
Nintendo when they walk into a piano recital (there are too many metronomes)
I dunno if Nintendo is to blame for this one tbh
Nintendo isn't even the sole owner of TPC, let alone TPC Korea. The Pokemon Company is owned by Creatures Inc., Game Freak, and Nintendo. The Pokemon Company (TPC for short) then owns it's subsidiarys TPC International, TPC Korea, etc..
In short you *not only* are blaming one company of three that have ownership of TPC. You are blaming one that is *twice removed* from this situation. This is the sorta the equivalent of blaming Microsoft for Doom's Developers screwing over Mick Gordan but even worse.
03
@@brianwalsh1339 2
you don't use a met at your recital
I actually heard about the issues with the Japan tournament from Taiwanese players who also faced the same issues and were unhappy as well. All 3 tournaments used the same format with the same bugs and caused a lot of unnecessary hassle. TPC Taiwan also sent out in person event invites 3 days prior to the actual event, which led to many people not even seeing the email in time to respond or prepare let alone travel. Now hearing about the issues in Korea too it seems that TPC subsidiaries in Pacific Asia are really mismanaged and disrespectful towards players and dismissive of their concerns, which is really disappointing and saddening.
If TPC care so much about their brand image, they NEED to learn from this past year. Buggy and unfinished game, multiple on-stream issues with the game, and now the whole Asian Circuit is busted because of the game's issues and the response has been either awful or a mixed bag.
I wouldn't be surprised if more protests happen, especially if more issues arise AND Worlds just happens to be in Japan this year, creating the perfect opportunity to make the Korean, Japanese, and other Asian player's feelings known, without a doubt, to Big Pika.
Combined with the sudden change in regulation, I have a feeling this is the most controversies they'll have in a long time. If this doesn't spark changes nothing will.
On that note an eastern company having better NA support might be a new one.
This is a serious situation but Big Pika is so funny to me, I'm going to start calling TPC Big Pika.
Good on the players for their solidarity with Blue (was that his name?). Disqualifying a player without a reason given is an awful way to treat someone, let alone one of the top Korean players. I respect them for taking a stand together, rather than trying to make a gain from another player being disqualified without a reason.
Blue is the reason the one player specifically chose a BLUE Florges, FYI.
Using only metronome is using randomness to determine the result of the battle, this is very clearly against the rules
@@carquest3748how?
@@JACpotatos rule 5.4.43 says you aren't allowed to determine the match by random means. If you and your opponent only use metronome, the only factor is luck and not skill.
@@carquest3748 tbh.... There's very little skill involved in Pokemon anyways with all the RNG. The most important part is just making a team. Even with metronome, your team is going to play a fairly big role.
I'm only referencing TPCi as "Big Pikachu" from now on.
Pokémon better not mess up French nationals. We’d be looking at more than a metronome protest, that’s for sure
- Definitely gonna see full guillotine teams
Lmao
Now this is a funny joke
Might call it the Pokémon renaissance
Dude full guillotine/OHKO teams would be crazy for France
DEWIT
The Korean equivalent of 'Metronome' is '손가락 흔들기', which means 'Finger Swinging'.
Y'all know which finger did we swing.
That makes this even better.
I understand that this is serious but calling TPC "Big Pikachu" is very funny
Thanks for raising this issue, really appreciate it. I am a new SEA VGC player who got into VGC in S/V because of content creators such as you, and managed to make it through the preliminary rounds. However, so much is left to be desired of the qualification format. An online event + BO1 + single elimination means all the prep work done can simply be undone very quickly due to poor RNG, poor matchups and not necessarily by skill. Also, being purely online means should you exit early, there's really nothing else to do e.g. interact with other like-minded ppl, enjoy the atmosphere etc. And if TPC really wants to grow the Asia VGC community, I think getting like minded people from across Asia to interact with each other in-person will really go a long way in achieving this goal.
Given how terrible the format is, plus the tournament was actually in conflict with my real-life commitments, it was an easy decision for me to withdraw prior to the tournament on Saturday. I just hope this incident do shine a light on how inferior the qualification format is for Asian VGC players, and hope there is an improvement to the format post-Yokohama. (i.e. in-person events across Asia)!
Same here~ I'm from Malaysia and was qualified for the Malaysia Regional Championship on 3rd June, went through the preliminaries at Top 16. However, I was shocked to note that its BO1 + Single Elimination + closed team sheet for such big official event for Malaysians. To make things worse, I woke up very early morning (7am) in order to go to a location that has better and stable internet connection, so that I would not have to worry about disconnection shenanigan, just because the organizer said that the briefing would start at 9am and the tournament at 10am. However, the 1st round of the tournament keep delaying and I'm only able to start 1st round at 12pm, which is ridiculous and unbelievable. And waiting while doing nothing during those 5 hours is mentally exhausting to me, which in the end I lose the 1st round. Seeing all these Korea & Taiwan VGC bullshits that could be avoided if TPC had done their job properly, while in Malaysia there's no sign or lack of support over Korean or VGC fellow players really make my passion towards VGC and competitive tournament spiraling down fast
Yeah even in PH that best of 1 single elimination shit really shows how they underestimate SEA. But they don't even know, we are only held back by the lack of pokemon events in SEA, but if we get the same treatment as the other countries, we already have a world champion in SEA by now.
*Plot twist:* There was no intro because Wolfey uses Metronome to generate his intros and it decided to give him the equivalent of Splash today.
When I clicked on this video, I wasn't sure if they were disqualified for the move, the item, or a real life Metronome
Now I want to see pro players showing up to the tournaments with real life Metronomes instead of Pokemon Plushies as the next stage of the protest.
@@thomasgerhart4333thats a great idea, imagine grand finals and both players pull out a metronome
I didn't even know what game it was when I clicked haha
Meanwhile in SEA we are having bo1 online single elimination tournament. On top of that, we were given last minute announcement regarding the application and the format of the event via email,(the last email was sent at 9pm before the tour and we were required to reply before 12am), which caused multiple players to miss out the registration. Not to mention the responses from their side regarding the format were also inconsistent .Some players were told that the format will be conducted in OTS but in fact it was CTS, causing such disadvantages in teambuilding. It's a shame that that's the ONLY chance we have to qualify for World
Same here~ I'm from Malaysia and was qualified for the Malaysia Regional Championship on 3rd June, went through the preliminaries at Top 16. However, I was shocked to note that its BO1 + Single Elimination + closed team sheet for such big official event for Malaysians. To make things worse, I woke up very early morning (7am) in order to go to a location that has better and stable internet connection, so that I would not have to worry about disconnection shenanigan, just because the organizer said that the briefing would start at 9am and the tournament at 10am. However, the 1st round of the tournament keep delaying and I'm only able to start 1st round at 12pm, which is ridiculous and unbelievable. And waiting while doing nothing during those 5 hours is mentally exhausting to me, which in the end I lose the 1st round. Seeing all these Korea & Taiwan VGC bullshits that could be avoided if TPC had done their job properly, while in Malaysia there's no sign or lack of support over Korean or VGC fellow players really make my passion towards VGC and competitive tournament spiraling down fast
@@wyattakatsuki891022 Yeap if you are not capable of hosting a tournament just hand it back to TPCI, I'm pretty sure the players will be more willing to pay for a overpriced entry and travelling fees than a shitty structure and management.
Wtf a 3 hours window to sign up? Most people would sleep straight through that.
Huge respect for taking this as seriously as you have
I have several Korean friends, and they have all expressed their anger about this situation to me. I like to think pokemon really cares about their community a lot and wouldn't do something like this, this is certainly the most extreme thing I've ever seen. If it's something that just Nintendo would do, that makes more sense. But it being just Game Freak without any Nintendo interference doesn't feel right.
You talk so fast!
I think you severally overestimate how much gamefreak cares about their community. Legends of Arceus still looks like its 2015 game even though it came out in 2022 lol
@@wunderpuma4453 2015? More like 2004.
@@wunderpuma4453 I agree with your first sentence, but the second sentence in my opinion doesn’t support it. You’re acting like a more significant portion of a game’s value is its graphics than it really is, and no game proves this better than S/V wich in some markets still hold the fastest selling switch title over tears of the kingdom. And you assert that game freak not putting their all into this particular element is indicative of how much they care about their audience when that’s far from the most likely cause of the issue->rushing a brand new gameplay format out by a hard deadline. So you really invalidated your own comment, at least for me.
@@wunderpuma4453 The truth is we don’t actually have a good estimate of how much game freak as a company culture and leadership culture cares about their fans. Because whatever they do will always be limited by the Pokémon company. What we do have is a good estimate of how the Pokémon company values the consistent quantity of gamefreak’s outputs over their quality.
The subject of this video-competitive pokemon governance-should not start with discussion about game releases because it truly is different and I would like to keep the shallow “pokemon games bad gamefreak bad” without deeper analysis, out of this.
If one person in a group is being persecuted, then I feel like solidarity is the move. Can't be scared of the offending party's reaction.
Maybe we as fans should look for more ways to include Metronome into more of our continued complaints with Pokémon as a whole. As Wolfe said, Metronome is a classy way to protest, and I'd argue it's very fitting for most issues we face.
The concept of Metronome is fun! But more often than not it results in unfavorable or arguably neutral (at best) results. Metronome is one thing when it's an occasional tactic. But when all you have is the unreliability inherent to Metronome, it can get extremely frustrating incredibly quick. It just doesn't work if you don't take some time approach Pokémon in a different way. It can't be the primary way you engage with Pokémon. There's so many other fantastic ways to enjoy Pokémon, but many of them are more-or-less impossible if you insist on Metronome as the key experience.
Replace "Metronome" with "having core Pokémon games come out quickly" and I think that mostly lines up with the experience of many Pokémon fans. How many people have said Game Freak needs to take an extra year or two so they can breathe? Even from a more financial angle, a lot of the key components of Pokémon's success (like, say, the actual creature designs) come directly from the people there, so it's important to not suffocate them.
Returning to the original point, if we as fans are able to make Metronome a symbol of our discontents, I believe we could make good use of it. Clefairy was one of the original candidates to be Pokémon's mascot, so surely TPC would recognize the significance if we were to make it the face of disgruntled older fans, tired of the increasing number of ways Metronome can conjure up trouble.
They don't care they are getting paid regardless
The disconnection issue is absurd. I played in the Philippine qualifiers and I had experienced disconnections, both from me due to my bad internet and the opponent. The disconnection would either count it as my loss or not count it at all, never favorable to me, which is annoying. I've had like 2 out of those 10 games where I was winning and the game disconnected, leading to a no-win count.
I was a player in the tcg many many moons ago (circa 2008-2012). One of the big reasons that Pokémon held and still holds such a prominent spot in my heart and life is how the player base is so supportive and most of the time very healthy. Seeing things like this protest makes me very happy, because even the top players are still fighting to try to enjoy the game, even with pretty major stakes. Players acting like this is why competitive Pokémon is such a major deal and why it is continuing to grow. I hope that the community is and continues to be as welcoming and positive as I remember it being all those years ago.
The Pokémon Company Korea: *disrespect players*
Players: *disrespect it back*
The Pokémon Company Korea:
*Surprised Pikachu Face*
Lmao, that’s perfect 😂
Coming from an Australian PTCG player, I really hope it gets better for you guys playing over in Japan & Korea. Had the pleasure of meeting some great people at OCE Internationals this year so hoping you guys see some improvement
In the South East Asia tournaments, it’s even worse because of how TPC does their online tournaments. People can literally cheat their way because of the Disconnection rule in which if an opponent disconnects, they can play the game again until a 2nd disconnect or sth like that, it’s so bad that despite players providing evidence of opponent’s disconnecting on purpose, TPC still allows them to play…
Wolfe please hold a tournament with metronome only Pokémon and invite these players to participate!!
Go to Korea and find them for him
@@StickyTrap on it, boss
if tpc refuses to hold events or treat players with respect because people call them out for their mistakes, or if they refuse to fix a broken system that they've chosen to have responsibility for, tell all the korean players to come play showdown because smogon actually care about their players and do everything they can to create an accessible platform for people all over the world to enjoy playing competitive pokemon together
It's getting to the point where the only way to save Pokémon may be to pirate/emulate and hack all Pokémon games. Kotaku had it backwards, buy Zelda and Metroid Dread while saving your money for them by pirating all of Pokémon's games and boycotting official purchases of (at least) the main series. 🏴☠️
#WhyDidTPCdoThis
#MakePokemonGreatAgain
#EmulateAllPokemonGames
This comment has to be a joke. Showdown isn't legit, and why would anyone play a format where over a dozen Pokemon are banned from use. Rapid Strike Urshifu is a problem? Like get real.
@martonyomchale342 This is what Smogonites actually believe, also that Weather (especially Rain) is OP, so ofc a Rain sweeper that breaks all anti-sweep defenses with Rain-boosted multi-hits got banned.
@@autobotstarscream765 No. I'm a mono-Water player. I've used Rapid Strike Urshifu since gen 8. Soft set for Jolly female and everything. I need two turns of set up with bulk up to sweep and sometimes I got walled. And then you have Pokemon that are special sweepers and outspeed. Those are the breaks. Even with Swords Dance and TailBlaze I can still be swept, or outspeed. Those are the breaks. I don't call for Amongus, Rillaboom, or Regieleki to be banned because they stop my mono water team. I just say those are the breaks and adapt.
@martonyomchale342 Mono-Water is different from a normal Rain team though, I feel like monotype is more skillful in general whereas normal Rain is gonna do stuff like use the Amoonguss to stall with the help of the Rain mitigating one of its weaknesses.
TH-cam recommended this to me and I had no idea the context and assumed some esports team managed to cheat somehow using a physical metronome
Yeah same
It took me a while to figure it out
To be fair it's always the Korean branch of Game companies that tend to have the worst response to any mess-ups on their end, not stereotyping but they tend to prove their own track records having a zero tolerance policy towards players who speak out against unfavorable actions that would negatively impact the community as a whole. That's just my two cents on it seeing what happening now and what has already happened in the years prior.
Yeah they do have that track record now that I think about it 🤣
Not sure why I'm getting this a year late, but this should have resulted in a lawsuit, and those running the tournament should have lost.
This video says they're within their legal right, however if you've already won a prize in a tournament (trip + travel setup are examples), then at least in US law even a private company (or single person) can't deny the prize without a good reason. It's one of several reasons Mr. Beast is in trouble. "You broke no rules but we don't like what you did so we're banning you anyway" would not be legit.
They literally wagged a finger at Pokémon Company Korea 😂
Wolfe, your videos are amazing. I find competitive battle strategy and your Pokémon knowledge so interesting but I never have battled competitively and have no idea of rules. You are by FAR the best TH-camr explaining competitive battling. You could talk about white paint and make it something I learn from. Thanks for the awesome content that actually brings value to the viewer!
Not surprised about the disqualification, too but Id say the protest successfully got out there as a result.
“Real YouTubists, talk about ethics, of using luck moves as a viable stra-te-gy”
Sentences you can hear
@@NerdySatyrlol
@@NerdySatyr "eel ducts"
I can fucking hear it
Wolfe: doesn't make an intro
Karsow: "fine, I'll do it myself"
Prankster Mixed Attacker Grimmsnarl with Screens + Spirit Break + Metronome is a legit omnicoverage offensive support Paladin of a Pokémon.
Other than Japan and Korea, other Asia region did not have it going well neither, nearly every announcement TPC made were so late that we dont have enough time to register, some confirming email is even all gibberish, nobody knows what is TPC doing...
17:10 it's ok Wolfey, you can say Verlisify
Glad to see probably the biggest name in vgc bringing some attention to this. I woulda loved to see the metronome cup though
Singapore has also had issues over the past weekend, I've heard similar stories from SEA friends about people abusing disconnects to rig matches. It's really depressing honestly, we deserve so much better :(
“If sejun park says you messed up, you messed up.” Y’all already know that’s true.
I wasn’t aware the divisions of The Pokémon Company operated so differently from one another. I had assumed that on a global scale the standards and rules of tournaments would be the same, especially with Worlds itself being held under The Pokémon Company International’s rules. I wonder if that’s why Worlds has never been held in Japan until this year?
In any case I’m really proud of those players. Risking everything to stand up for their competitor because they knew it wasn’t right. I hope the bylaws of tournaments get changed so there can be no disqualification without an explanation. Otherwise they could DQ people for nothing, or to make sure their favorite to win (presumably for advertising reasons) gets the champion title.
It's not really a surprise that those divisions operate independently. In Yu-Gi-Oh (Konami-owned), they not only have different standards and formats for tournaments, they have separate release schedules for new sets, and most importantly separate banlists between the TCG (International) and OCG (Japan, Korea, some other parts of East Asia). And that's not a difference of a card or two, it's an entirely different philosophy of game balance. And apparently their World Championship uses a third special banlist that basically becomes some weird mix of both official banlists.
Bonus wolfie content id my favorite content because its usually just how it is, straight up facts and thoughts.
I hope TPC steps up their game, in VGC ruling AND game development.
25:13 I don't think TPC can just stop the tournaments, as those are what keeps the core player base engaged in the long run. No tournaments = no competitive scene = no promotional content = no casual interest. Even if they keep the merchandise sales as high as they are, they'll loose a lot of customers in the worst way (aka, pissing them off so hard they'll never return), and seeing how the anime is doing, they really can't afford that.
you overestimate the power or numbers of the core playerbase or competitive scene. In every video game, the competitive scene is generally a very small minoritiy and an insignificant part of the size and revenue of the company itself.
@@hanszimmer2412 You underestimate the power competitive scenes have on any activity. You think the sports we have would be nearly as popular if they didn't have massive casual followings for the competitive scene? I'm talking about everything from basketball with the NBA to League with its LCS. The interest in competitive scenes even from casual players is absolutely what drives a lot of sales lol
@@scoutbane1651 First off, you definitely make a mistake there comparing competitive video games to classic sports. The number of competitive players plus the people interested in the competitive scene is a very small part of any video games size and revenue. The gain from tournaments and associated competitive players and the following advertisement is not even 1% of TPC. Professional esport athletes or popular gamers get banned and disqualified left and right across many different video games without much repercussion for the companies itself. And concerning classic sports: even FIFA could demand the ban of Christiano Ronaldo without batting an eye if they see fit, because it would have zero impact in the end.
@@hanszimmer2412 Don't move the goalposts. You said the entire competitive scene is insignificant to the sale and size of the company. That's the point I'm disputing. I never said banning these players will make an effect on their size, but cancelling the entire competitive sphere abso-fucking-lutely would and you're just delusional if you think otherwise honestly. Even just Wolfe has 1 million subs. A single competitive player, talking about competitive. You think that doesn't affect sales or player retention? Lmfao. Obviously the two fuel each other.
@@hanszimmer2412 so why would company spend money and run the scene all around the globe mind you if it was useless smartass they don't want to waste money they want to make money
Pretty rich to say the actions are "harmful to other players" when every single player agreed to it.
“Harmful to other players or offensive images.” Oh so tpc just made it 2000x harder for these players to get jobs that looks HORRIBLE to an interviewer.
And unfortunately, Koreans are not as litigeous as USAers, who would have grounds to sue over that being given as a public descriptor for defamation of character.
I was not aware of this. Thank you Wolfe for sharing g this information with your subscribers. Hopefully things get better 🤞🏽
It's funny to me that they were concerned about their brand image over this. There are probably two types of people: people who are way too far down the rabbit hole to just give up on pokemon over a player protest, and people who never would have heard of this lol. And of the people who care about this, the response only makes their brand look worse than the protest. If these tournaments exist to get people invested in Pokemon, an image of a community supported by a company that listens and maximizes enjoyment would be the way to do it. "Our consumers disagree with what we made for them, so we silenced them" isn't a mantra that makes me want to invest in a brand lol
This sounds like a bad situation all around. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the devs and tournament organizers who allowed the build to pass QA and who proceeded with the tournament despite the setup not working correctly.
Thanks for covering the situation, especially for those of us that don't follow the scene on social media.
Devs have absolutely no responsibility in such companies!
If the manager says, RELEASE NOW, any dev either pushes the current version to live, or is fired, and his replacements first job is to push the current version live, never even hearing or knowing why the last dev didn't push it live immediately...
If Devs have the right to be responsible, they'll push back the release until they're done, regardless of what promises the mamager made with no plan.
Hearing "the pachirisu world champion" makes me wonder what would happen if every world champion got one pokemon as a honorary title. :-D
That would be very cool ngl
This type of protesting really needs to happen during Worlds for TPC to care.
I have to admit that Metronome's animation being used as the closest thing to a middle finger is very clever, but they could take it a step further and there are many things they could use to protest.
Justified ability on all Pokémon + useless moves. Especially Lucario, since it gets Justified and Metronome.
Having something like Helping Hand or Uproar as the only move.
Also, any Pokémon that cannot learn Metronome, can still hold the Metronome item.
Having just one move, that is also counterproductive, such as Heal Pulse.
Fun strategies such as Funbro could get their chance to shine here.
Trick or Switcheroo as the only move, while holding the Metronome item.
MandJTV should bring back his metronome only tournament after this to help raise awareness
A funny thing I found about it being metronome was basically it saying "no no no." With how the finger moves from side to side lol.
Not being into the competitive Pokémon scene at all, I had no idea until 2:39 that this had anything to do with Pokémon and the move Metronome and only clicked on this video to see how Korean players (of some unknown game) got disqualified for the use of an actual metronome, a device used for keeping tempo by producing an audible click at regular intervals 😶
Just clicked on this video for exactly this reason 💀 I thought it was some kind of rhythm or osu-like game and they were using a metronome computer program... Oops lol
Lol I love how you explain things. It's basically the same way i do to try to get people to understand and you nail that bro!! Please keep pumping out content all your stuff is a totally hit in my opinion!!!!?
This is what happened in a summary
-IRL tournaments cancelled in favor of (uncompetitive) Bo1 online matches
-Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off
-Qualifiers are unplayable due to horrific glitches in the actual game
-TPC rescinds earned placements
-Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off
-Replacement ladder keeps uncompetitive rulesets (best of 1, no tera preview, when the rest of the world gets best of 3 with tera preview) and is cheesed with alt accounts due to lack of screening and low reqs
-Players complain, TPC tells them to piss off
-All four day 2 players agree to only teach all of their Pokemon Metronome, to protest how poorly organized Korean VGC is
-All players are disqualified and Trainer's Cup is cancelled
Thanks Wolfey. I might not have gotten away with the exact info I wanted (what about the move was illegal), but I still came out with some understanding of the situation.
as a wise man once said, "nobody hates nintendo fans more than nintendo"
Another wise man said “It’s always right to pirate Nintendo games”
Nintendo didnt do anything here
@@SERMareep2007it literally says on dq reasons"[...] That Nintendo Co ltd finds inappropriate" how delusional can nintendrones be
@@Gettenhart you’re literally just wrong. It’s pokemon company korea. the people shutting down your emulators are literally hours away and dont have fucking anything to do with vgc. They just share stock. This is basic knowledge.
@@mimipeahes5848 He is wrong, but it's pretty clear that Nintendo just doesn't care about what their subsidiaries do, either.
They should make a 1 pokemon tournament with metronome only and everyone is on shedninja
Im sad this was cancelled. Metronome only Korean world finals sounds like a circus😂
Just some advice for first time viewers like me who stuble here from reccomended videos you should specify in what game or competition you're talking about in the first 5 seconds itll be a lot easier to follow the topic!
Anyway I quite enjoyed this video and might start watching your content if I enjoy the next one I click on from ya :3
as someone who is just getting into competitive I respect it and I hope things change
DQing for using a legal in game move
.
Sounds like a smogon thing with banning moves
BonusWolfe is peak vibes
Thanks for making this video to inform all of us that don't use Twitter and only learn news like this from TH-cam
Love these vids, takes me back to sword & shield era
What? This is ridiculous, metronome is 100% based on luck for it to work and why the hell did they get banned for using a move that relies entirely with luck?
Because it was done in protest, which is negative to the company's image. And apparently there were subtle messages with "wagging finger," which I'll say... 'interpret it as you will'
Honestly, it was a "pick your poison" scenario. And disqualifying the players, especially in this manner, was going to be a gamble on whether it would be accepted or not. Unfortunately for them, it was basically a guaranteed fail because the internet talks
This whole situation is a perfect example of why the idea of the "perfect protestor" is nonexistent. Just as Wolfey said, the finalists could have loudly protested in more meaningful ways that would have drawn more negative publicity to TPC, but instead chose to protest "appropriately," more tongue-in-cheek than genuine protest. But Nintendo decides what is appropriate, and so an appropriate protest cannot happen.
Three months later these four players have a lifetime ban from competitive Pokemon, no apology from the company, and have not enacted meaningful change in the Korean competitive scene. Whatever brief awareness the community had of their sacrifice has been snuffed out by Nintendo's assertions that they were hacking.
I see this as a lesson that if you are going to protest in a scenario where even the mildest form of protesting will be met with the most severe punishment, then the point of your protest should be as disruptive as possible to the status quo. Otherwise you will be quietly swept away, your cause will be left nowhere, and if you're lucky you might at least be acknowledged for protesting "appropriately."
Honestly the thing that pisses me off most is that we lost out on seeing a hilarious tournament where everyone just uses Metronome lol.
I think it was risky of TPC to disqualify them for protesting though. I remember when Blitzchung (the Hearthstone player from Hong Kong) had his winnings taken away from him and was banned because he protested against China's abuse of Hong Kong during a tournament. That caused, probably one of the biggest boycotts a game company has ever seen. I don't know the exact numbers but I'm pretty sure thousands if not tens of thousands of people stopped playing Blizzard games, they lost tons of WoW subs including Mark Kern who was once a team leader for Blizzard on World of Warcraft, cancelled his subscription to his own game. They had staff at Blizzard HQ walk out in protest. Brian Kibler refused to cast the Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament, as well as many other casters. Mitsubishi even cancelled their e-sports sponsorship to Blizzard.
This happened almost 4 years ago and Blizzard back-tracked most of their decisions within a week yet I'm pretty sure Blizzard STILL hasn't recovered from it.
Blizzard's had an actual sex scandal exposed out here and they still are doing better than ever from that. Lets be real here surprised pikachu face pfp.
@@JayceCH. Better than ever? I'm not sure about that. Better than the height of WoW's popularity? Better than before they got bought out by another company? Better than when they actually had an e-sports scene?
I mean come on, there are 7 games on my Blizzard launcher and aside from OW2 and the small handful of people I know still playing WoW I don't know anyone who plays SC2 or D3 or even Hearthstone any more.
Pro business tip: if a company is easily purchasable when it otherwise hasn't hasn't its not doing well. @@JayceCH.
At least Metronome can potentially do damage.
Imagine if they all registered teams that knew only stat boosting moves.
Only stat boosting with no baton pass and the like, and no pokemon that can DPS would be seen a throwing the match, so that would have been penalized severely. Unless there was some way of getting struggle to work or forcing a struggle, but that would have to be shown as a viable tactic somewhere else first or they'd assume match fixing
metronome battles are fun to watch
Why do I get the feeling that this could result in Metronome no longer being a TM in generation 10
disqualified for using an intentional game mechanic in an intentional way is wild
I’ve only just started this video, but with how fumbled it sounds, looking back, it seems like 2023 was just a cursed year for competitive given all that happened at actual Worlds
Heya, just a thing to consider, you might want to add more context up front, in the title even potentially. I get that this sort of content is aimed at a very specific audience, but as a person who isn't familiar with this channel and consumes mostly pokémon unrelated content, it took me quite a while to figure out what we were even talking about - for the first few minutes I assumed we're talking about musicians because nothing explicitly pokémon related came up until then
I understand that this is to a big part a skill issue, but consider being mindful of that in the future as it can be a barrier to entry for new viewers ^^'
Great video regardless tho!
It's sad how long it took me to even figure out what game this is all about.
They should have all included metronome in their moves along with 3 other normal moves. That way they might have gotten in and then just agreed to only pick metronome during the tournament.
Not gonna lie, a Metronome tournament would be hype to watch.
Alternate title: Pokémon players in Korea wag their finger at the Pokémon Korea company
"You want to protest? No thank you, that's... Inappropriate"
Imagine your boss says this.
Sounds like the toxic Korean work culture
I'm a band nerd and thought some Korean band got disqualified in a competition for having a metronome in their ear while they performed and I was so confused.
What a weird time to be recommended news... 14 months late.
Seems like the korean pokemon company is just compounding their issues further and further rather than just stepping up and dealing with their initial shortcomings, i just feel bad for the players who have lost opportunities when they did nothing wrong. Also i feel like people would've been stoked to see an all metronome masters round, i know i would tune in to see how the best players in my region use crazy strategies, just seems like a loss all around.
The players were only top 4 because of luck on that ladder, based on that description of how it was run.
Having only Metronome for the final bracket is actually the most accurate way to determine the winner.
shoutout to the korean vgc players, hope they help fix the problems of vgc in korea
That would have been the coolest top 4 ever😂. Glad u spoke up on this!!!
If there are teams or movesets that are against the rules the devs should have built in a way to prevent them from being locked in
Amazing how they call protesting offensive and not completely tanking the tournament offensive
Shout out to Kaphotics who has been a toxic voice in making stupid genning arguments even though that has nothing to do with this situation. We need to have a conversation about how some of the community is just as nasty and unsupportive.
Make the games have some kind of feature where you can "generate" or I guess "train" your Pokémon in game to have specific EV/IV and moves in exchange for some kinda in game currency and this issue disappears overnight
Kurt's arguments about genning ain't wrong. They are just, for once, severely misplaced.
@Domin0us and that's where I'm at too. His recent tweets and Reddit posts over the weekend show that all he cares about is his moral superiority complex. A mismatched memory or OT has absolutely nothing to do with this. He never should've even said anything bc now I can't take his outcries in good faith
They are an absolute hypocritical clown with a holier than thou attitude making/contributing to PKhex while also shitting on people who use it. Honestly, they are just interested in making drama and attention seeking. Literally one of the most vile people in the Pokemon community.
Kaphotics is right to make chaos for TPC, the EA of Pokémadden. At this point, it may be time to drop from all irreparably broken official Game FrEAk Pokémadden official competition, and pirate/emulate and hack all Pokémon games while moving competitive play to Showdown!, run by Smogon, who cares about the fans and competitive balance more than Game FrEAk Sports (It's Not In The Game!) _ever_ will.
#WhyDidTPCdoThis
#MakePokemonGreatAgain
#EmulateAllPokemonGames
#EmulationIsTheAnswer
#EmulationIsTheFuture