Updates

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

Over the past few months, the team has been focused on bringing the most recent Pokémon TCG expansion release, Scarlet & Violet—Paldea Evolved, to Pokémon TCG Live. In parallel with bringing this new content to the game, the team has been hard at work making significant progress on upcoming optimizations to enhance the game experience. Today we want to share with you a look at just a couple of changes coming to the game this week.

One of the changes coming to Pokémon TCG Live will replace condensed art in the game's mobile version with full card art. This change will allow the card art to truly shine on the mobile platform and provide more clarity on what your opponents are playing. An update to the visual experience is only one of the goals with this upcoming change. In a future update, we plan to remove the data for these assets, which will significantly reduce the load size in both the mobile and desktop versions of the game. This update will optimize the performance of load and installation times for all players once removed.

Before

After

In our ongoing efforts to increase support for the Expanded format experience in Pokémon TCG Live, the current in-game shop will be updated. Starting August 10, booster packs and theme decks from Sun & Moon Series expansions will be available in the shop in exchange for Crystals. Products from older Pokémon TCG expansions will continue to be added to the shop as the game updates to support more Expanded format cards. We’re excited to begin taking these next steps to bring the full Expanded format play experience to Pokémon TCG Live!

The Pokémon World Championships kick off this Friday, and we’ve got a fantastic digital distribution you can obtain during the live broadcast on Twitch. Tune in during the stream to snag a redeemable code for Pokémon TCG Live that will grant Charizard ex as a hyper rare card. In addition to this code, you can expect more Twitch Drops, including digital booster packs for the upcoming Scarlet & Violet—Obsidian Flames expansion that releases on August 11, 2023. You can look forward to more Pokémon TCG Live rewards like these in future broadcasts.

We thank you again for your continued support and feedback for Pokémon TCG Live. We look forward to sharing more details on upcoming changes with everyone in our next letter before the end of the year.

—The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Development Team

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

At the end of January, we announced that digital Pokémon TCG products launched after March 1 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 June 5, 2023, at 9:00 a.m. PDT, 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 June 8, 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 May 2, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. PDT through June 6, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. PDT 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

Dear Pokémon TCG fans,

Thank you for all the support and feedback on the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Live.

When we first started game development, our goal was for Pokémon TCG Live to be an integral part of the Pokémon TCG ecosystem and a digital extension of the beloved tabletop game. We wanted to create something fun and accessible for new players to learn the Pokémon TCG, while also offering existing players more ways to connect and hone their skills.

For years, we have watched the Pokémon TCG community grow and have been inspired by the passion and feedback from fans. We have learned that sometimes it can be difficult to find someone to practice with or even to know where to start.

So, we set out to bring the Pokémon TCG to mobile devices and help make it easier to be a part of this amazing community. And while there is more work to do before the game is ready for global launch, we remain deeply committed to our goal of making Pokémon TCG Live a wonderful experience for you, our players.

The limited beta was designed to give the community a voice in shaping Pokémon TCG Live, and we have learned a great deal since our rollout in Canada. Your feedback is critical to the development of Pokémon TCG Live as we continue to explore ways to evolve the game.

With this in mind, we are excited to welcome players from Mexico to the limited beta today. This expansion into a new territory will help us better understand our players and achieve our goal of building a great digital Pokémon TCG experience at scale.

Furthermore, in the future, we look forward to exploring additional markets for the limited beta.

To help make it easier to share feedback, we will release a survey in the coming weeks, and we invite you to participate. Your responses will go a long way in identifying our priorities as we work on the game.

We will also continue to update and refine the game during the limited beta and beyond. For full details on today's update, please visit: https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/tcg-news-announcements.

We’re just getting started with Pokémon TCG Live, and we look forward to cultivating a long-term relationship with our players and working with you on this journey.

—The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Development Team