Pokémon Home is giving trainers a whole new way to manage their Pokédex, but its launch has been plagued by technical issues both minor and serious. The Pokémon Company and Nintendo first announced that Pokémon Home would be out in February at the end of last month, before quietly releasing it into the wild this week.
Pokémon Home lets players store their Pokémon on its servers, making them easier to transfer across different games in the series. It’s available in both a free version, which only allows users to store 30 Pokémon, and a paid premium version, which has room for 6,000 Pokémon. Using Pokémon Home to swap monsters from other versions of the game will also allow Pokémon Sword and Shield players to access a handful of creatures that aren’t natively found in the new release.
Given the high demand for Pokémon Home and the difficulty of making so many different Pokémon compatible across different versions of the game, it may come as no surprise that the app’s launch had some difficulty. One of the most prevalent problems users had was simply logging in. Fortunately, there’s a simple fix for anyone having trouble linking their Pokémon Home and Nintendo accounts. More seriously, some users are experiencing Error 992, which results in their Pokémon collections seemingly disappearing after being transferred to Pokémon Home. The problem is being widely reported on Reddit and elsewhere online.
Other users are reporting frequent crashes in Pokémon Home, and some say only certain Pokémon are missing from their collections after transferring them. For those who aren’t having these problems, there’s already an active trading scene in Pokémon Home, with users setting up swaps of rare Pokémon. Users are also granted a free Kanto starts and a Pikachu just for logging on, courtesy of Pokémon Home’s bizarre new character, Grand Oak.
Nintendo hasn’t publicly addressed any of the issues with Pokémon Home yet, but in the first few hours after launch, that’s not entirely surprising. It is still disappointing, though, especially considering that some trainers are already paying $15.99 per year for Pokémon Home’s premium subscription. Given that some players are worried about losing their entire Pokémon collections, Nintendo needs to be clear about what’s being done to fix the problem, and soon. Until it’s clear that the missing Pokémon are safe and sound, it may be a good idea to keep from making any big transfers with Pokémon Home.
Next: Pokemon Sword & Shield: Understanding Your Pokemon’s Stats Guide
Pokémon Home is available now on Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.
Source: AndyJekal/Reddit, ProZD/Twitter