Pokemon Korea has cancelled the Pokémon Trainers Cup finals in South Korea due to a planned protest from the tournament’s finalists.

This tournament is the most important VGC competition for players in South Korea, and its four finalists were scheduled to face off in Pokemon Scarlet And Violet. However, due to various issues with how Pokemon Korea handled this year’s competition, the four finalists decided to stage a protest by using Pokemon that only knew the one move in the tournament: Metronome.

For players who may not be aware, using Metronome causes the Pokemon to use a random move from all that are available in the game. This would have led to a chaotic, completely random battle that, while entertaining, would have caused problems for the tournament organizers. As such, Pokemon Korea chose to disqualify all four players and cancel the entire tournament, saying that their actions “falls into prohibited acts”.

You can read a full breakdown from one of the disqualified players (Nash) below:

How we got disqualified for playing Metronome. pic.twitter.com/AR6ukdApMU

— Nash (@NashVGC) June 3, 2023

Pokemon Korea’s decision has been met with strong criticism from members of the Pokemon community, many of whom stand by the disqualified players and their calls for the company to improve their handling of official tournaments in the region.

At the time of this writing, it is not known whether the tournament will eventually resume, or what further actions Pokemon Korea will take with regards to the controversy.

Stay tuned for more details as they come.

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