Pokémon Sword and Shield won’t get new content or updates

By Cristina Alexander Published October 14, 2022

With Pokémon Scarlet and Violet coming around the bend, The Pokémon Company has announced that the last mainline games in the series, Pokémon Sword and Shield, will not be supported with new content after November 1.

According to Serebii.net, The Pokémon Company is weaning online content support away from the previous mainline titles with one last update. On November 1, Wild Area News will receive a final update that comes with Pokémon that weren’t normally available, such as Gigantamax Snorlax. Wild Area events are typically held once a month, but after this update, the game won’t receive any more updates.

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From the same day onward, the Battle Stadium will no longer update with a ranked season, and results for the Ranked Battle Season will not show up on Pokémon Home. No further official online competitions will be held, however, you can still host play in Friendly Competitions. Results from that competition also won’t appear in Pokémon Home starting December 1. Thankfully, other online functionality will still be active as normal in Pokémon Sword and Shield, such as friendly battles and trading.

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The move isn’t too surprising considering that new mainline Pokémon games will launch in November, and will likely receive live support similar to Sword and Shield. The Pokémon Company hasn’t given confirmation on whether results of ranked battle seasons from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be displayed on Pokémon Home, but it’s likely that they will since they’ll have online support for everything else.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet release on November 18 for Nintendo Switch.

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Cristina Alexander

Gaming/Mobile Writer

Cristina Alexander is a gaming and mobile writer at Digital Trends. She blends fair coverage of games industry topics that…

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