Discovery Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Save Data Corruption Discussion (Update 1.2.0 Bug)

bdt2002

bdt2002

Self-proclaimed Guardian Signs super-fan
is a Pre-Contributor
Hey there, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted in the Scarlet & Violet threads, but something’s come to my attention that, from what I can tell, might be important to warrant its own thread. For those unaware, a bug has recently been found in the games where some users have reported their save files being corrupted and/or deleted after downloading the 1.2.0 patch update. Reports on what causes this bug to occur have varied wildly, with multiple unconfirmed rumors surfacing regarding the gift Hisuian Zoroark, the new Paradox Pokémon Walking Wave and Iron Leaves, and reports of the bug activating when linking your Pokémon Scarlet & Violet game to Pokémon GO via the game’s postcard system. In response to the awareness of this issue, several players online are claiming they don’t want to play the game anymore or buy the recently announced DLC out of fear of their save files being erased and unable to be recovered, due to Game Freak’s controversial stance on cloud save functionality.

The amount of users reporting issues, while growing, remains relatively small from what I’ve been able to gather. For what it’s worth, I don’t know anyone in person who’s had issues with the game as of late. As of March 7, 2023, anyone from Nintendo, Game Freak, or The Pokémon Company have yet to issue a statement regarding this issue.

I didn’t see any other threads talking about this yet, so I wanted to make a spot where we could report any issues we’ve come across, if any, and maybe figure out a collective solution to the problem. While this doesn’t do much to help Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’s already divisive reputation, it is of my understanding that similar bugs have been found in previous main series Pokémon titles. If you’re afraid of losing your save data, my first recommendation would be to make sure you have a place to access save data archives on the Nintendo Switch hardware as opposed to the Save Data Cloud.

That’s all I’ve got for now; have a good day, everyone, and for the time being, try not to be too worried about this issue unless something actually happens to your hardware or software. :)
 
Part of me wonders if this is another thing where certain SD Cards are the root cause. Stuff like this keeps cropping up with Switch titles and so often it comes back to "oh this sd card was not supported for a reason"

Also iirc the issue here is the save file is actually still present, it just cannot be read properly. So it's something that actually can be saved with a patch, or hacking (yet another hacker W). I saw a theory that something about the file size of the patch relative to the game or save file itself might be a cause, which is why it's currently relatively rare.
 
Over the past 24 hours, multiple other content creators on YouTube have been discussing this issue, seemingly in an effort to try and help people avoid this bug. The number of confirmed reports of this bug happening remains low, as very few of the reports seen online have actual evidence to back them up. However… at this rate, the bugs aren’t what I’m worried about, If anything, the fact that people are losing hundreds of “valuable” Shiny Pokémon in a game that’s only been out for three and a half months (somewhere around 110 days, for reference) is only telling me that Shiny Pokémon don’t mean jack squat anymore, to say nothing of how easy it is to access competitive Pokémon anyway.

The far bigger problem that no one wants to talk about, since God forbid someone says something positive on the Internet, is how the information presented by content creators online has way, way too much impact on everyday consumers. I’m willing to eat my words if something were to happen to my own game save(s), but I for one think Internet culture is what needs to be held accountable.

Long story short, notice how pretty much none of modern gaming’s problems were nearly as prevalent prior to the advent of the Internet. Notice how when one content creator says something negative, the online algorithms prompt people to either agree with the majority or have their voice not be heard. (A friendly reminder that these are usually the same people who promote free speech rights.)

This bug won’t be what takes me away from Pokémon, but the way things are going, you shouldn’t expect to see me call myself a part of this hilarious double-standards joke of a fanbase that keeps breaking their own rules. I’m done. If I ever get back into Pokémon’s newer games, they’ll purely be offline only.
 
bdt2002 said:
Over the past 24 hours, multiple other content creators on YouTube have been discussing this issue, seemingly in an effort to try and help people avoid this bug. The number of confirmed reports of this bug happening remains low, as very few of the reports seen online have actual evidence to back them up. However… at this rate, the bugs aren’t what I’m worried about, If anything, the fact that people are losing hundreds of “valuable” Shiny Pokémon in a game that’s only been out for three and a half months (somewhere around 110 days, for reference) is only telling me that Shiny Pokémon don’t mean jack squat anymore, to say nothing of how easy it is to access competitive Pokémon anyway.

The far bigger problem that no one wants to talk about, since God forbid someone says something positive on the Internet, is how the information presented by content creators online has way, way too much impact on everyday consumers. I’m willing to eat my words if something were to happen to my own game save(s), but I for one think Internet culture is what needs to be held accountable.

Long story short, notice how pretty much none of modern gaming’s problems were nearly as prevalent prior to the advent of the Internet. Notice how when one content creator says something negative, the online algorithms prompt people to either agree with the majority or have their voice not be heard. (A friendly reminder that these are usually the same people who promote free speech rights.)

This bug won’t be what takes me away from Pokémon, but the way things are going, you shouldn’t expect to see me call myself a part of this hilarious double-standards joke of a fanbase that keeps breaking their own rules. I’m done. If I ever get back into Pokémon’s newer games, they’ll purely be offline only.
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This literally reads like Todd Rogers claiming that the guy who looked at the source code for Dragster didn't factor in the "human element" of the speedrun to me. The fact that the number is above 0 is problematic in itself regardless of who it happens to in a game where they're still refusing to let people use cloud saves.
 
This franchise has an issue with "legitimacy", to the point that the dumb bored apes of a year and a half ago (those who crashed and burned despite being a gold mine or something inane) reeked in a familiar way.


A shiny has always been worthless. Stuff in apri/beast balls is worthless, and the fact that you cripple yourself to catch that doesn't add any value. Bottle Caps and Mints not changing the actual IVs and nature is a convulted extra step (as the ability swapping items change them down to the flag), and, at the end of the day, it is not just the fandom, but the devs trying to enforce some uniqueness. Which in the day and age of Pokemon Go is... laughable, because that game will give you repeatable legends.


Just, have fun with the game.
 
I don't want to derail this in an moral argument but for everyone that needs to hear this:
honestly you can just cut 95% of the discourse with "the value of something is simply what you personally value it"
some people shinyhunt at full 1/8192 odds, some people shinyhunt on eggs, some people are particular on the ball choice, some people like to have a battle ready dex

the beauty about this game is there is nothing wrong with any kind of approach you have about it, because there are communities for every type of player and even then it's simply up to *you* whether these things are worth to you or not

I smile like a buffoon as I smiled for my first one every time I stumble on a Shiny, but I'm also proud of my RNG abuse projects; other people are proud of their softresetted shiny legendaries, and so on
There is no wrong way of playing a Pokémon game
 
That said, this issue with legitimacy is also the downfall of the series on some aspects

We pretty much easily know that the main reason Pokemon doesn't allow cloud saves is cause it'd allow to easily clone pokemon.


...so, what is the problem anyway with it, at this point there are so many pokemon distribution sites that anyone if they want can easily access an hacked or genned pokemon anyway. Together with the supposedly coming "ingame pkhex" honestly may be time they stop preventing using cloud saves or separate save slots, since these would at least make potential save corruption less of a problem
 
Worldie said:
That said, this issue with legitimacy is also the downfall of the series on some aspects

We pretty much easily know that the main reason Pokemon doesn't allow cloud saves is cause it'd allow to easily clone pokemon.


...so, what is the problem anyway with it, at this point there are so many pokemon distribution sites that anyone if they want can easily access an hacked or genned pokemon anyway. Together with the supposedly coming "ingame pkhex" honestly may be time they stop preventing using cloud saves or separate save slots, since these would at least make potential save corruption less of a problem
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Yeah the whole thing with this is always like...you know in most cases it's easy to see yeah yeah you dont want this which is why its like this in game.

But the amount of people who would "abuse" cloud saves has to be miniscule. It's annoying to do and most people probably wouldn't think about it, and the people who would think of that would probably be more likely to think oh i can just pk hex myself.
At least with the save states on the 3DS VC that's something anyone anywhere can do and would be super easy to think of.

Reminds me of how Animal Crossing New Horizons nerfed interest, because a handful of people were "abusing" it, so they just made it worse for everyone. Just a real (animal) forest for the trees situation.
Also very funny that AC did eventually get an island back up & transfer tool, well after release, but you can only use it once.
 
Could this issue be linked to the micro SD card? IDK if other people have experienced this issue like I have, but updates / DLC for almost every switch game I play fails because the microSD card can't "properly format it" or whatever. Normally have to take my microSD card out and then update it so it gets properly installed. Also, a lot of random image files get deleted for some reason. Supposedly switch saves aren't saved on the microSD, so its pretty unlikely that this is the issue, but you never know.
 
Magcargo said:
Could this issue be linked to the micro SD card? IDK if other people have experienced this issue like I have, but updates / DLC for almost every switch game I play fails because the microSD card can't "properly format it" or whatever. Normally have to take my microSD card out and then update it so it gets properly installed. Also, a lot of random image files get deleted for some reason. Supposedly switch saves aren't saved on the microSD, so its pretty unlikely that this is the issue, but you never know.
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I guess if there's something significant in the update that is in the Save File but not on the SD card it's saved to (like data relating to the Go Post Cards for Vivillion interaction) it could cause something to go wrong? Just to continue spitballing on this idea with no direct evidence.
 
There is a thread in r/PokemonScarletViolet that details a lot of the content as well - worth a read if you find it worrying or just want more general knowledge on it.

(Here)
 
Always a big fan of media overblowing a super rare issue for views.

Anyhow, personally I'd suggest the same "preemptive measures" that worked for SwSh, just in case the issue is the same or has similar causes, aka making sure that save data is saved to Switch and not the SD, and disable autosave.

Anything else other than just "dont play the game" is pointless, expecially with the Decidueye raid coming up shortly
 
I'm really not going to blame the media "overblowing" this
People's saves were being deleted in tandem with a new update, even if it's rare it's important to report so that people are aware of it. More awareness ideally leads to more finding out if they have the issue and having mroe data points to figure out what the issue actually is.
It's also, frankly, difficult to know how rare something actually is. The fact it was a non-zero number of people around a similar time frame at all is still cause for at least looking at it, especially when there appears to be multiple possible issues.


Anyway this is very funny
since even the game is not allowing players to join a raid because they have an "illegal Pokemon" in their party (H. Zorua with Happy Day), a clear mistake from GameFreak/Nintendo.
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bdt2002 said:
Over the past 24 hours, multiple other content creators on YouTube have been discussing this issue, seemingly in an effort to try and help people avoid this bug. The number of confirmed reports of this bug happening remains low, as very few of the reports seen online have actual evidence to back them up. However… at this rate, the bugs aren’t what I’m worried about, If anything, the fact that people are losing hundreds of “valuable” Shiny Pokémon in a game that’s only been out for three and a half months (somewhere around 110 days, for reference) is only telling me that Shiny Pokémon don’t mean jack squat anymore, to say nothing of how easy it is to access competitive Pokémon anyway.

The far bigger problem that no one wants to talk about, since God forbid someone says something positive on the Internet, is how the information presented by content creators online has way, way too much impact on everyday consumers. I’m willing to eat my words if something were to happen to my own game save(s), but I for one think Internet culture is what needs to be held accountable.

Long story short, notice how pretty much none of modern gaming’s problems were nearly as prevalent prior to the advent of the Internet. Notice how when one content creator says something negative, the online algorithms prompt people to either agree with the majority or have their voice not be heard. (A friendly reminder that these are usually the same people who promote free speech rights.)

This bug won’t be what takes me away from Pokémon, but the way things are going, you shouldn’t expect to see me call myself a part of this hilarious double-standards joke of a fanbase that keeps breaking their own rules. I’m done. If I ever get back into Pokémon’s newer games, they’ll purely be offline only.
Click to expand...
I figured I might as well address this post I wrote now that this discussion’s had some time to fire off. I’ll admit my… I guess you could say “leave of absence” might have been a bit of an odd way for me to respond to this situation. Generally speaking I’ll still be avoiding Pokémon content creators on YouTube, Twitch, Discord, et cetera for my own reasons, but I also want to keep emphasizing that I have no hard feelings towards any of them as people, too. The people discussing Scarlet & Violet’s bugs on the Internet (which technically includes us on this thread) aren’t to blame for what’s happened with Game Freak’s… questionable product design.

In the meantime, here’s a list of some general safety tips that should, if nothing else, decrease the chances of your save data getting deleted:

-Only participate in Tera Raids with players you know you can trust, as far as them possibly having illegitimate Pokémon is concerned; this is just in case the bug is able to spread in Tera Raid lobbies

-For similar reasons as above, only participate in the Union Circle with players you know you can trust. In addition, do not, under any circumstances, play alongside a user whose save file has been deleted or corrupted, as it’s very possible the bug will spread to whoever is playing multiplayer with that user; if a (working) patch is distributed for this, you should be safe to continue playing as normal

-If you can, try and avoid accessing raids for Walking Wake, Iron Leaves, and (just in case) the upcoming Decidueye that are hosted by players who have pre-ordered the DLC; I understand that it might be a bit tricky to tell if random players have or haven’t, but just do the best you can

-If you’re playing either Scarlet or Violet digitally, remember that you can archive your game’s save data on the Nintendo Switch hardware and re-download your file at a later time; while we have yet to be able to confirm this will work, there’s a small chance you might even be able to recover the corrupted files by archiving the game now and re-downloading it specifically after the patch, to which the new patch should, in theory, be applied to the corrupted file
 
bdt2002 said:
-If you’re playing either Scarlet or Violet digitally, remember that you can archive your game’s save data on the Nintendo Switch hardware and re-download your file at a later time; while we have yet to be able to confirm this will work, there’s a small chance you might even be able to recover the corrupted files by archiving the game now and re-downloading it specifically after the patch, to which the new patch should, in theory, be applied to the corrupted file
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Actually, they specifically said to not do this in the reddit post if your save data is already corrupted.

Archiving it altoghether and not playing it, well, sure, that could work as well, but honestly, may as well just... not launch the game if one's that scared.
 
bdt2002 said:
In the meantime, here’s a list of some general safety tips that should, if nothing else, decrease the chances of your save data getting deleted:

-Only participate in Tera Raids with players you know you can trust, as far as them possibly having illegitimate Pokémon is concerned; this is just in case the bug is able to spread in Tera Raid lobbies

-For similar reasons as above, only participate in the Union Circle with players you know you can trust. In addition, do not, under any circumstances, play alongside a user whose save file has been deleted or corrupted, as it’s very possible the bug will spread to whoever is playing multiplayer with that user; if a (working) patch is distributed for this, you should be safe to continue playing as normal

-If you can, try and avoid accessing raids for Walking Wake, Iron Leaves, and (just in case) the upcoming Decidueye that are hosted by players who have pre-ordered the DLC; I understand that it might be a bit tricky to tell if random players have or haven’t, but just do the best you can
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You are treating this like a virus
That's...almost certainly not how this works
 
Worldie said:
Actually, they specifically said to not do this in the reddit post if your save data is already corrupted.

Archiving it altoghether and not playing it, well, sure, that could work as well, but honestly, may as well just... not launch the game if one's that scared.
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While I can see where this post might be coming from, I’m going to have to disagree, but only because a patch isn’t out yet. I went ahead and archived mine anyway (although realistically I wasn’t planning on going back to this game regardless) since my data hasn’t been corrupted. That being said, I’ve also been following my own tips that I’ve listed off, and haven’t had any problems with the game outside of one time when the game crashed because of that thing with the wild Pokémon spawns.

If you save data has been corrupted, however, this is where I start to agree with this Reddit post. The potential problem with archiving a corrupted save is that it could carry that corruption through the patch and potentially even to your hardware, which could impact any other games you may have.

R_N said:
You are treating this like a virus
That's...almost certainly not how this works
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This wasn’t supposed to be a double-post, so I do apologize for that. The timing of your post was a bit off on my phone. The thing is, even if this bug is not a virus, it may start to function like one if not properly handled. By definition, a technology virus can be used to describe any hardware malfunction produced by external factors and has the potential to spread through the hardware’s components.
 
So how wrong is it that my main thought is that at least it was caught early? Like, I just naturally expect GF to break the save files doing a major update and we collectively dodged a bullet by it happening before you could transfer from Home to SV.
 
Ironmage said:
So how wrong is it that my main thought is that at least it was caught early? Like, I just naturally expect GF to break the save files doing a major update and we collectively dodged a bullet by it happening before you could transfer from Home to SV.
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not particularly wrong. No matter the situation, or how widespread it is, gamebreaking (or well, softwarebreaking in general) bugs like this are better caught very early when you can minimize the impact, that later on.
 
bdt2002 said:
If you save data has been corrupted, however, this is where I start to agree with this Reddit post. The potential problem with archiving a corrupted save is that it could carry that corruption through the patch and potentially even to your hardware, which could impact any other games you may have.


This wasn’t supposed to be a double-post, so I do apologize for that. The timing of your post was a bit off on my phone. The thing is, even if this bug is not a virus, it may start to function like one if not properly handled. By definition, a technology virus can be used to describe any hardware malfunction produced by external factors and has the potential to spread through the hardware’s components.
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Iiiii think you're massively overblowing the risk potential of this thing.

The issue with the game is reading (& presumably saving) the data, and it seems from what little can be gleamed, likely tied to things like:
-downloading the patch data
-downloading the unlock key for the DLC
-downloading the unlock key for the bonus clothing
-downloading the pokemon go postcards

And then from there likely some issue crops up when trying to load the file. So the problem is likely either the game itself, the switch, or the sd card that messes up something on accident when writing to the game, followed by the game reading the cart/switch/sd card and going "hmm, this isnt right".
None of that is going to "spread" to you if you go online, you've already bypassed at least one of the possible triggers that might cause an issue, and the others aren't being written into your stuff.
In fact if it could "spread" (either to the other people's games or your other switch stuff) then it would probably have been found more quickly, and likely would escalate far faster

Yeah in the most strict of definitions viruses can be bugs that get out of hand but if we treat these bugs like that then good lord scarlet & violet are time bombs. As are most any game on switch that glitches out and causes game crashes or loses save data.


It's why the only thing you can really do if you're worried is just not download more things. But honestly if you've already downloaded the patch and are fine, you probably are just, like. Fine.




Side note shout outs to the people carrying around Bad Eggs but still trucking. Bad Eggs gotta be the most fascinating intersection between "accidental error handling" and "the best error handling" and "biggest risk" venn diagram
 
Magcargo said:
Could this issue be linked to the micro SD card? IDK if other people have experienced this issue like I have, but updates / DLC for almost every switch game I play fails because the microSD card can't "properly format it" or whatever. Normally have to take my microSD card out and then update it so it gets properly installed. Also, a lot of random image files get deleted for some reason. Supposedly switch saves aren't saved on the microSD, so its pretty unlikely that this is the issue, but you never know.
Click to expand...
You might have either a faulty or bootleg SD card in that case. IIRC there's a bunch of bootleg SD card sellers on places like Amazon and Ebay that pretend that they're selling official SD cards but are actually bootlegged, so its possible this happened to you.
 
WinterArcanine said:
You might have either a faulty or bootleg SD card in that case. IIRC there's a bunch of bootleg SD card sellers on places like Amazon and Ebay that pretend that they're selling official SD cards but are actually bootlegged, so its possible this happened to you.
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I actually bought bootleg SD cards from a physical store once.
 
I have had my save file deleted from installing the update that i had downloaded on Saturday and i don't even think it would be from my micro SD card since it was a nintendo branded one (the 200 something GB one). Im so upset that i had updated it and purchased the DLC in the same timeframe from when i booted up the game after it downloaded the 1.2.0 update and then purchased the DLC before i had went to bed and got on just today after a couple days of work and found my save data deleted and had to restart my whole game from scratch when i had a shiny fuecoco that was evolved into a skeledirge. Man I've basically spent 175 plus hours on the game just to have it deleted.....seriously thinking game freak should at least try helping out the players who have had that problem happen. Its so frustrating to have however many hours invested and then just boot up the game and then witness that you have to redo everything you've accomplished in the game all because of an update patch issue.......im seriously regretting getting this game if i knew this was gonna be this bad just from downloading an update or hooking my account up to Pokémon Go or whatever originally caused this to happen. Im so fed up like its gut wrenching to have all my progress lost when i was so close to slowly getting every little item in the game with the help of a Paldea companion app i use to find out what Pokémon I'm missing or what kind of item i still needed to find.
 
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