Pokemon Battling is probably my biggest hobby. I do it all the time, I have a youtube channel for it, I've even let new games go unplayed while I continue to battle. But something that's always bugged me about it is the number of people who hack. The sad truth is that it's harder to find someone who doesn't hack than someone who does, and that's kind of depressing to me. I'm not talking about Wondertombs or 999 in all stats, instances like that are surprisingly few.

Basically, hackers in Pokemon (known as Pokesavers) play with Pokemon that are entirely within legal limits, they just put no actual effort into obtaining them. My main problem with it is that people who hack and people who don't have to play in the same arena when there's an alternative for hackers: Shoddy Battle. It's the same deal; plug a bunch of numbers into a machine and duke it out with other simulated teams, without having to deal with things that everyone supposedly hates, such as Voice Chat, Friend Codes, and the Nintendo Wifi Connection.

As I said, Pokesavers generally set their Pokemon within legal limits, but there are a few instances where they have a decidedly unfair advantage. Competitive grade Pokemon such as Zapdos, Raikou, Suicune, Latias, and Cresselia are all nearly impossible to obtain legitimately. This isn't true for Pokesavers; it's as easy to sav a Zapdos with HP Ice as it is to sav anything else. Finding at least one of these on nearly every team just adds insult to injury.

Then there are Pokemon such as Arceus, that can't be obtained at all without the use of a cheating device. This problem has always existed. Before Darkrai or Shaymin were officially released, I still had to battle them. In Platinum a new problem arises: Pokesavers can use platinum forms on wifi while legit trainers can't, for whatever reason.

One of the arguments I always hear from Pokesavers is that they don't have time to breed teams. But if I'm willing to devote a certain amount of time into breeding and you're not, then why should that be my problem? It goes back to my Shoddy argument, if you're unwilling to spend the time it takes breeding, there's an entire online community that feels the exact same way. Not to mention it's cheaper than buying an Action Replay.

So yeah, that's how I feel about hacking in Pokemon. Pokesavers are cheating; being widely accepted doesn't mean they're not cheating.