Pokemon Go Hides Powerful PvP Pokemon Behind Paywall Until After World Championships

Pokemon Go will be hiding a potentially valuable Pokemon to its metagame behind a paywall until after its biggest tournament of the year. Pokemon Go's Season of Hidden Fates is officially underway, which will bring new Pokemon and events leading into Pokemon Go Fest at the end of August. Players who pre-order a global ticket to Pokemon Go Fest will be able to obtain Carbink, a Rock/Fairy-type Pokemon from Pokemon X & Y, starting on June 21st by completing certain limited Timed Research quests. Carbink won't be available to other players until Pokemon Go Fest, in essence giving them a roughly two month window of exclusivity to get Carbink.

While Carbink isn't exactly a popular Pokemon to hide behind a paywall, members of the competitive Pokemon Go community are consternated over the fact that it will be paywalled until after the Pokemon World Championships. Carbink is a meta-relevant Pokemon in the Great League tier of PvP play, which happens to be the "official" league for competitive play. Coupled with the fact that players will need to collect XL Candies for Carbink to fully level it up to a competitive tier, and players basically need to pay for the Pokemon Go Fest ticket if they want to have a Carbink ready for the Pokemon World Championships, which is due to take place in early August. 

Now, it may not seem like a big cost to pay compared to those looking to compete in the Pokemon Trading Card Game (in which meta-relevant cards are more expensive to purchase on the secondary market, leading to some expensive decks), but Pokemon Go fans are worried that the game's competitive scene is essentially moving to a pay-to-play model. Given Pokemon Go's traditionally low bar of entry to play, adding a monetary component may sap the game of some of its remaining devoted fans. And given the wave of bad news Pokemon Go has had to deal with in recent months, that might not be a good thing.