Reports have surfaced online of malicious hacked Pokemon being sent through Pokemon Sword And Shield‘s Surprise Trade, wrecking havoc on unsuspecting players.

This issue was first highlighted by Kaphotics, a well-known Pokemon dataminer within the community. These bugged Pokemon contain hacked data designed to block access to online features by causing the player’s game to crash whenever they attempt to activate Y-Comm communications. Luckily, it seems that the bug will not affect the player’s save data.

You can read Kaphotics’ explanation of the issue below:

Your save data won't be corrupted; the Pokémon you received from Surprise Trade is waiting to be received and will crash when the game tries to receive it. Can't launch any online features. It'll also crash if received via trade, but only once — just release it afterwards.

— Kurt (@Kaphotics) February 12, 2020

Currently, the safest option would be to avoid Pokemon Sword And Shield‘s in-game Surprise Trade option until a patch is released (or the hackers responsible get bored). Players could also use Pokemon HOME‘s free Surprise Trade feature as an alternative, although it is unclear whether hacked Pokemon transferred via HOME could also cause this issue.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.