>>30757789Cheating absolutely has to be dealt with if they want VGC taken seriously. No competitive game worth it's salt turns a blind eye to cheating. The idea, if gamefreak has it, that they will lose the few players they have, is just not true. Pokemon is not the only example of a rampant cheating fanbase, see Diablo 2 for example and some FPS. Duping in Diablo 2 was just a thing due to the way the online worked. If it's not dealt with, even a minority of them can run rampant and screw it all up.
Not all cheaters will get caught, but without SOME action taken, they eventually run rampant and you get a fucked up state of the game. Imagine if an aimbot was just never banned in an FPS. What happens? Even if only a few people use it at first, without a ban it just keeps running rampant. Without actually doing something, even a little, shit gets fucked up and nobody takes it seriously anymore. That's the state of Pokemon. Nobody ever really gets punished, at worst they get removed from the tournament until next year.
Anti-cheating measures are now standard in most games, with companies like EA actually hiring 3rd party programs out to use and scan PCs and things rather than make their own. It's basically a staple at this point. Gamefreak doesn't do it and nobody knows if they just don't care or don't know what they are doing. Personally my money is just on the latter, we know they aren't great programmers.
The easiest option going forth from here, is some kind of online check functionality with the Switch, where it connects to the server like an always online game. If you catch a mon while offline, you don't get the new pentagon/plus mark equivalent. The data gets stored somewhere so you can't just hack the mark on. Tada, problem solved. Still too much for Game Freak to pull? Probably.
Who knows if they'll ever actually deal with it, but this is pretty much the facts. Don't wanna deal with it? Competitive Pokemon will be a joke forever.
