What The Pokémon Company Learned From The Underground, Open-Source Pokémon Community

Intro: The Pokémon Company Doesn’t Miss

Here’s a little something different on Slam Dunk Software—video games. But don’t worry, I’ll tie it into some open-source, linux programmer nerd stuff at the end.

The Pokémon Company doesn’t miss. They’re the LeBron James of media franchises. No, really. They’re the highest grossing media franchise of all time.

On October 30th, 2024, The Pokémon Company released a mobile game, Pokémon TCG Pocket. It’s basically a Pokémon: Trading Card Game (TCG) simulator, with pack openings, as well as an abbreviated version of traditional player-vs-player gameplay. And…

It’s been a huge success.

It’s hard to really grasp just how big of a success this has really been—and a well-timed one at that. I mean, Pokémon was launched in 1996. They’ve weathered the dot-com bubble, other recessions, many generations of gaming consoles, mobile phones, the rise of online gaming and platforms like Steam, and though there were some lulls, they’re having a moment in 2025. A big moment.

The Pokémon Company is coming up on their 30th anniversary(!). And alongside the launch of Pokémon TCG Pocket, their physical card game companion is seeing peak-levels of popularity. They’re printing cards as fast as they can and it’s not enough.

Pokémon Champions And Open Source

I said “well-timed” earlier because The Pokémon Company just announced what might be its biggest release ever: Pokémon Champions.

So what is Pokémon Champions? Well, it’s essentially a Pokémon battle simulator. This is speculative, but it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any roaming around a world and “catch[ing] them all”—it’s just team building and battling.

And Pokémon Champions has the potential to change Pokémon forever.

I’ll rattle off some reasons why this is the case, but if you want to go more in-depth, this video by Wolfey is a great resource (shout out WolfeyVGC—he’s the most successful creator on this side of the internet, and his video on the topic inspired this post).

Reasons why Pokémon Champions could change Pokémon forever:

1. There has always been a conflict between the single-player, adventure gameplay (which is 90-99% of players) vs. the competitive Pokémon scene (which generates a lot of media and revenue for The Pokémon Company). Marrying the two has always been a struggle. It’s one of those scenarios where both parties need to compromise for the other, and as a result everyone is unhappy.

   1. This new system introduced by Pokémon Champions has the potential to separate the two experiences, making both parties happier than ever.

2. It’s cross-platform across mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch

3. It has the potential to make competitive battling more accessible, make team-building faster and easier than ever, and as a result, let players focus more on strategy and creative team-building—all of which will lead to more competition!

Now, I want to turn the spotlight to an open-source project which has been around since at least January, 2012 (13 years ago!) — Pokémon Showdown.

Pokémon Showdown is not an official product of The Pokémon Company—they’re not affiliated whatsoever, and as such, operate in sort of a legal gray area.

But, Pokémon Showdown is the OG battle simulator. They’ve been doing what Pokémon Champions is set to do for over a decade.

See, the underground Pokémon community realized 13 years ago that the battle system within the games just didn’t scratch their collective, competitive itches. They dreamed of something that allowed them to build and share teams without having to go through the hours of labor required to get these Pokémon in the games, and get the perfect IVs and train the EVs to perfection, and get the right egg-moves, and all of the other chaff that goes into preparing a championship-caliber team.

So, in the battle simulator, you could just, pick from a catalog. You could ideate and test different variations of teams without having to grind, rinse, and repeat.

This lead to an explosion of creativity and competitiveness. Pokémon Champions (like, people who have actually won official tournaments) ever since have practiced, not on the game, but on Pokémon Showdown. Once they find a successful team, then they go in-game and grind through the requirements to make those simulated Pokémon real. (That part is actually fun once you know your team is gonna be good.)

This community around Pokémon Showdown is massive. I spent a lot of my childhood there, making friends from all over the world, making crazy teams, participating in tournaments, and it’s also, actually, how I got my start in programming.

Open-Source Feedback Loop

All that to say, Pokémon is 100% better off for having let Pokémon Showdown exist. This open-source community has built thousands of guides, and is still the gold-standard for team-building resources. Different Pokémon “builds” (movesets + ability + stats) are published on their forums, and world-championship winning teams are forged on their servers. Open standards like “Poképaste” (which is basically a YAML representation of a Pokémon team) have become the official standards, even into official VGC formats, and are basically the only way Pokémon players can share their team-building ideas on the internet.

I’m curious, now, how much of this will feedback into The Pokémon Company and their Pokémon Champions product.

We can use RedHat Enterprise Linux as an example. They take the upstream, open-source software, improve it in some capacity for their enterprise customers, but then those improvements often feed-back into the upstream linux software.

Will The Pokémon Company take inspiration from Pokémon Showdown? Will it be explicit or implicit?

My dream of all dreams would be for The Pokémon Company to publish public APIs (😱) for Pokémon Champions. And maybe some official standards for sharing teams on the internet (maybe some JSON format, or adopting the Poképaste’s YAML structure). Then we could write our own, open-source team-builders, and have those actually interface with the official battle simulator.

I doubt this will happen, but if it does, boy I can only imagine what the creative Pokémon community could accomplish.

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Conclusion

I don’t have much else to say, other than I hope to see more info about this new Pokémon Champions game they’re developing, and we’ll see how the relationship with open-source shapes up!