admin 
Pokémon Legends: Z-A is so focused on its single-player story that you might have forgotten the RPG has a competitive mode like most other Pokémon games. This four-player versus mode pits you and the other trainers against one another in a race to see who can defeat the most monsters in a short amount of time. Even if you’re not a competitive person, you might still be playing this mode to try and unlock some of the Mega Stones gated behind it. So you want it to be fair, right? Well, it sounds like the mode is being overrun by hackers who are cheating their way to victory.
I don’t play much of Legends: Z-A’s multiplayer myself, so the first time I was clued into the hacking epidemic was through a video on TikTok that showed a Mega Garchomp repeatedly using its powerful ground-type attack Earthquake without any cooldowns. Because there was no gap in between these devastating area-of-effect moves, its trainer racked up points on the scoreboard so quickly that there was no way anyone else could catch up.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that this has become so widespread that Pokémon creators are weighing in and providing their own footage of rigged online matches. Some of the possible hacks might not be that recognizable to the untrained eye. AustinJohnPlays has an extensive video on several hacked Pokémon he and others have encountered online, though not all of the exploits are as damning as a Garchomp with no cooldowns.
For example, he shows a Lucario who seems to have been captured with a Poké Ball that isn’t available in Legends: Z-A. This doesn’t give anyone a competitive advantage but it’s an example of how some people are clearly modding the game in various ways. Some are advantageous in competitive play, like someone having an Alpha Xerneas, a larger, more powerful form of a Legendary Pokémon that is only obtainable once in Legends: Z-A and not as an Alpha. Clearly, some players are up to hacked shenanigans and taking these unobtainable Pokémon online.
Some of the hacks AustinJohnPlays highlights might seem harmless, such as some players changing their in-game trainer ID card images to real photos, but when you see there’s an astronomical gap between their online scores and those of regular players, it’s probably safe to assume they’re also messing with the stats, movesets, and properties of their Pokémon.
At the moment, Legends: Z-A doesn’t have any kind of reporting or blocking feature, so these hackers are running around in competitive battles, spamming moves and using Pokémon they shouldn’t be able to access. We’ve reached out to The Pokémon Company for comment on the situation and will update this story if we hear back.
