Enjoying Pokemon Sword/Shield so far? Sadly, it looks like not everyone is having a smooth journey in the Galar region.

Over the past several hours, several Japanese gamers and streamers have reported experiencing crashes while playing their copies of the games. While it is currently unclear what is causing the crashes, they can occur as early as entering the Pokemon Research Laboratory, as seen in the following clips:

世界最速でエラー落ちしたVtuberｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ#ポケモン #ポケモンソードシールド #ポケモン剣盾 pic.twitter.com/PFpkNUDVKF

— ぴーまん@Vクリエイティブゲーミングチキン (@Pmang_V) November 14, 2019

https://twitter.com/kirihiiro01/status/1195142836452130816

From the reports so far, the worst case was one streamer experiencing a crash while playing his digital copy of Pokemon Sword, then discovering that the crash had deleted the game data on his SD card. This includes not only the game data for Pokemon Sword, but other games stored on the card as well. Thankfully, it seems his save files were still intact as they were stored on the Switch’s internal memory.

For now, these reports have only come from owners of the Japanese versions of the games. Players have speculated that it may have something to do with the new autosave function, or with defective SD Cards. We will continue to monitor the situation and bring further updates as they come.

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

[UPDATE]: Some new information about what could be causing the crashes has surfaced online, suggesting that it is most likely due to an SD Card issue. More details can be found in our follow-up article here.