Quoted By:
25 July, 2003: Game Freak releases Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire in Europe. The former focuses on a Pokémon, Groudon, capable of causing droughts and heat waves just by being a thing.
Also in July 2003: One of the largest European heat waves/droughts in history begins. Over seventy thousand die. This timing may be deemed coincidental, by the fools; in reality, this heat wave was pulled off as a promotional stunt for Ruby and Sapphire. The hardest-hit region was France.
2005: Emerald releases overseas. A rehashed and improved version of Ruby and Sapphire, the plot features a dragon that makes weather harmless, while also having the aforementioned drought Pokémon clash with a Pokémon of storms and floods.
Also in 2005: Katrina hits the US. Much of central and southeastern Europe are hit with drastic floods. Spain, France, and Portugal suffer from severe droughts, leading to drastic wildfires in the latter. Again a promotional stunt, made to make people think "BOY I SURE WISH THE WEATHER WASN'T KICKING MY ASS".
Investigations were launched afterwards, but Game Freak chose to drop the whole "manipulating the weather for promotional stunts" thing and lie low for a while.
Several years later, the first region based on something other than Japan or the US (because pls no third bomb) released, in the form of Kalos. Based on France. Which suffered the most from the initial droughts that led to this shitshow. This was meant entirely as an "apology" of sorts to the French for their promotional stunt gone wrong. Nobody looked into it. They didn't care enough to make Kalos good.
2014: Ruby and Sapphire are remade. A substantial number of floods break out throughout the year, but nothing quite on the scale of the initial release. Game Freak has realised that they won't get away with it twice.
2016: To silently mock those who suffered through the horrible drought of 2003, the first version in the next two releases are both named after the sun.
How can GameFreak get away with this?
