A while ago on my blog I brought up the fascinating (and surprisingly lucrative) world of competitive Pokémon battling (click here to read it). The Pokémon Championship Series was to make its way to London in August of this year, where players from around the world would gather and battle to see who was best. In the VGC (Video Game Competition) players would see who had trained their Pokémon the best and chosen the best strategies to win; and in the TCG (Trading Card Game) players would see who had built the best deck of Pokémon cards, a deck that could outrank all the other decks around.
Well, due to the current COVID-19 crisis, this 2020 championship series has been cancelled. It is, of course, rather unsurprising given the unprecedented scale of the virus but I wanted to publish an update, nonetheless.
I should point out that while the official championship series has been cancelled, online championships such as the Pokémon Players Cup and the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield International Friend Online Competition have been organised in an attempt to replace the series during this epidemic.
According to their website, all individuals who were climbing the ranks in hopes to be invited to the championships will have their points (used to determine rank) carried over into the next year. How this will work remains to be seen, but it would seem that nobody expects anything to change anytime soon.
If you would like to read the release put forward by the Pokémon Company, click here.
If you would like to learn more about the Pokémon Players Cup, click here; and the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield International Friend Online Competition, click here.
Featured Image provided by Jay from Unsplash. Click here to see more of Jay’s work.