The Pokémon Company Says It Doesn’t Have An Issue With Nuzlocke Runs, Actually

The Pokémon Company has taken the unusual step of releasing an official statement about Nuzlocke runs, in response to reports that it removed creators from its content program for engaging with them, VGC reports.

The initial report came from content creators Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, who previously co-hosted Nintendo’s official YouTube show, Nintendo Minute. In a recent podcast episode, the duo revealed that they had pitched a Nuzlocke run for an episode of Nintendo Minute, but claimed The Pokémon Company had been strongly against it.

Nuzlocke refers to a set of punishing rules some players choose to use for Pokemon runs, including simulating permadeath every time a pokemon faints, and only allowing players to catch the first pokemon encountered in any given region.

“We thought that this would be a fun idea for a Nintendo Minute video,” Ellis explained, when asked if they had ever played the game with Nuzlocke rules. “So we pitched it to the Pokémon Company saying ‘hey, we would like to do a Nuzlocke run, what do you think?'”

“[We] thought they were going to fire us,” Yang added, before Ellis went on to elaborate: “They said, ‘we consider this to be on the same level as using hacked games, ROM hacks’ … But this is just a style of playing the game that everyone can buy, there’s no hacking.”

“There were a lot of creators that played Nuzlocke style of Pokemon that got erased from the creator program,” Yang went on to claim, leading to widespread reports that The Pokémon Company is against Nuzlocke runs, leading the company to issue a statement to the contrary.

“We do not have any issues with fans/creators playing the games with Nuzlocke rules,” The Pokémon Company International said in a statement to Serebii‘s Joe Merrick. Merrick also said there is no evidence beyond Yang’s statement that creators have ever been dismissed for playing Nuzlocke rules.