Pokémon Scarlet and Violet – unlucky fans are losing hours and hours of progress (pic: The Pokémon Company)

A rare bug is wiping Pokémon Scarlet & Violet save files, prompting questions as to why the game doesn’t have cloud save support.

Ever since the game launched, players have been complaining about numerous bugs and glitches that they’ve encountered in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet.

Several of these issues were fairly harmless and even amusing, though others could outright break the game and the most recent example certainly hasn’t left affected players laughing.

That’s because some players have tried booting up the game, only to find their save files have been corrupted and are essentially lost forever, costing them hours of progress.

While the exact cause isn’t entirely known, this only began happening after the most recent patch for the game, suggesting it may be the root of the problem.

It was initially suspected that the bug was tied to purchasing the DLC expansions or connecting the game to Pokémon GO, but there are claims of players still losing their save data despite doing neither of those things.

Attention was first drawn to the situation via a Reddit post by Matthewcbayer, who says they already spoke with Nintendo to try and recover their 595 hour save file, but all their troubleshooting failed.

Matthewcbayer acknowledges that the bug only seems to have affected an extremely small portion of players (at the time of writing, the last known estimate of affected players is over 30), but they wished to raise awareness since it could theoretically happen to anyone else.

‘I was in no way trying to spread fear, it’s so rare, no one should assume it could happen to them. But if it does happen, people can know they are not alone, and I’ve worked my butt off to get this in front of Nintendo, Game Freak, and The Pokémon Company,’ they say.

Some fans believe that this situation is reason enough for Nintendo to introduce cloud save backups for the Pokémon games. Although the Nintendo Switch does boast such a feature, it doesn’t apply to any of the Pokémon games for some reason.

‘It’s ridiculous that in the year 2023, they don’t have a cloud backup for our save files, especially when we are paying for subscriptions like Pokémon Home and Nintendo Switch Online,’ argues Matthewcbayer.

Another user, Vali1991, agrees, saying, ‘Nintendo needs to allow cloud saves for this very reason, the fact they don’t is just ignorance and stupidity at this point.’

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Fortunately, while Nintendo nor The Pokémon Company have publicly commented on the situation, the latter is at the very least aware of it and is looking into it.

This is according to Serebii’s Joe Merrick, who has been in contact with The Pokémon Company and passed the information back to Matthewcbayer on Reddit.

Assuming a solution is found, there’s no telling if players will be able to recover their lost save data or if they’re truly gone forever.

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet is available for Nintendo Switch.

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A rare bug is wiping Pokémon Scarlet & Violet save files, prompting questions as to why the game doesn’t have cloud save support.