Updates

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

At the end of January, we announced that digital Pokémon TCG products launched after 1 March would no longer be supported in the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online to help ensure that development resources are dedicated to making Pokémon TCG Live the best experience possible for players. On 5 June 2023, at 17:00 UTC, the Pokémon TCG Online will be removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Pokemon.com and game servers will be shut down.

The Development Team is grateful for all the community's support of this game. Witnessing your contributions throughout the years shows how strong and invested the digital Pokémon TCG community is. This passion has flourished with new and old players alike, and we cannot wait to see this community continue to grow with Pokémon TCG Live.

We're excited to announce that on 8 June 2023, the Pokémon TCG Live game will officially launch. To celebrate our community and the end of global beta, any player who logs in to Pokémon TCG Live between 2 May 2023, at 17:00 UTC through 6 June 2023, at 17:00 UTC will receive a special gift that includes a unique global beta coin, deck box, and card sleeves.

With these dates announced, it's important to note that players can still migrate their accounts even after the servers have been shut down. There's currently no assigned cutoff date for migrating your account and collection. Should that change, we will update the community in advance of any final migration cutoff. In the meantime, we invite you to take an opportunity to read here about what to expect before and after migrating your account to Pokémon TCG Live.

As we look to the future, we can't wait to share with everyone how Pokémon TCG Live will evolve and improve with your help. We are committed to working alongside this amazing community to create the premier digital Pokémon TCG experience that all types of players can enjoy. Thank you for your contributions and support during the global beta.

—The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Development Team

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

Today, we’re excited to share more about the updates and changes coming this year to Pokémon TCG Live!

In August, we shared a survey with everyone who played the Pokémon TCG Live limited beta to help us in our ongoing efforts to better understand player impressions of the game’s current state.

Today, we’d like to provide insight into some of the common themes you shared with us as part of that survey:

• Players liked crafting, daily quests, and Battle Pass content.
• Players found the gameplay to be strategic and clear.
• Players found matchmaking was too slow, and some players experienced numerous bugs.
• Players disliked the pace of receiving progression rewards and the difficulty of finding cards in their collection.
• Players disliked the art style, including elements like avatars, board design, and overall UI layout.

We’d like to thank everyone who took the time to share their thoughts with us—they are critical to the development of Pokémon TCG Live. We’ve identified and prioritized all the issues described, and your feedback helps us continue adjusting and iterating on the many ways we can optimize the experience for all players.

With today’s update, the visuals and board layout changes previewed in our last letter are now live! With this new design in place, we’re excited to show off some new visualizations that will use the background to display various Energy types when Pokémon are played. These animations will replace the existing ones currently in-game, with plans to add more background effects in future updates. Here are just a few of the new animations we’re looking to implement before the end of the year.

Touching on the pacing of progression rewards noted in the survey results, our internal data review showed that most players used rewards to craft competitive decks before receiving those same cards in the Battle Pass. As a result, we changed the Battle Pass so you earn more in-game currency and receive those cards in earlier tiers. Because of these changes, you no longer have to wait as long to earn powerful cards to complete your decks and can enjoy a more diverse crafting experience as you experiment with deck building.

As development on the limited beta progresses, we’ve continued to add more regions to help pave the way for the infrastructure to support our players globally. We’re excited to continue learning from our community as we roll out to more regions in the next few weeks, with the goal of rolling out the limited beta worldwide by the end of the year.

The feedback we’ve received and continue to receive from all of you has been an integral part of helping create a better game experience for all our players.

We can’t wait to share more about what we’re working on next.

—The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Development Team

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

Thank you all for providing us with your thoughts, feedback, and support during this stage of the Pokémon TCG Live Limited Beta. Today we’d like to share some of the ways we’re prioritizing development based on the experiences you’ve shared with us and with each other in the community.

A point of feedback we’ve often received is that players feel the game board layout is too limiting compared with a physical Pokémon TCG match. We’ve adjusted how cards are presented to players in landscape mode to make for more intuitive gameplay. You can see some of these changes in the example below, taken from the version of the game we’re currently testing:

This future layout update will give players a complete view of the cards and options available to help inform and improve strategy and play. This also includes reworked card sizes and better use of the board’s empty space so matches feel more active, while making more information available to the player.

In addition to layout changes, the development team has significantly emphasized improving the overall visual polish of Pokémon TCG Live while in a match. Our goal is to create an in-match experience that’s visually unique and appealing while also including elements of what we and our fans love about the world of Pokémon. Your ongoing feedback on all these significant changes is critical in helping us, and we look forward to sharing how else we’ll be rolling out adjustments and improvements in service of that goal.

While we’ve been making progress on visual and practical improvements to the game board, we’ve also been focusing on the responsiveness of the game overall. In a recent update, we rolled out some changes to the in-game store to significantly improve the time it takes for actions like redeeming booster packs or making purchases. This work will extend to other functions of Pokémon TCG Live to ensure that the game feels quick and seamless both in and out of matches.

Your perspectives, thoughts, and considerations about the game have all been invaluable to us in guiding what will come next to Pokémon TCG Live. We encourage you to continue sharing that sentiment, and help us reach our goal of creating the best digital Pokémon TCG experience possible.

—The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Development Team