Pokemon Fans React To New MOBA Game ‘Pokemon Unite’ – Take Issue With Chinese Involvement

By 
·June 26, 2020

The Pokemon Company recently announced a brand new game in the long-beloved Pokemon franchise. Earlier this week they revealed details about Pokemon Unite, a new MOBA style game in the vein of League of Legends, SMITE, and Heroes of the Storm.

In the official trailer below, the 5V5 MOBA game is laid out in detail. We find out that the game is a partnership between The Pokemon Company and Tencent’s subsidiary TiMi Studios, makers of Call of Duty: Moblie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0meaWFXuTzc&feature=emb_title

Ishihara seemed very optimistic about the game, saying that the goal is to “create a cooperative Pokemon Game that anyone can pick up and enjoy immediately, but also has a lot of depth to be played over and over again.”

He also had high praise for Tencent’s TiMi Studios saying, “Tencent Games’ TiMi Studios specializes in team-based battle games and we have fused that with Pokemon to create an all new experience in Pokemon Unite.”

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However, while The Pokemon Company expressed their announcement about this upcoming free-to-start game for Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, a number of Pokemon fans had a very different reaction especially with the realization that The Pokemon Company was collaborating with the Chinese owned Tencent Games.

The announcement trailer was massively downvoted by fans. As of writing, it currently has over 83,000 up votes, but a massive 151,000 down votes.

Fans didn’t just express their concern with the new game by down voting, but also made it clear in the comments section as well.

Many were frustrated that the game was simply a mobile version of League of Legends with a Pokemon skin.

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Others made it clear their dislike was due to Chinese involvement in the game.

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And still others took issue with the fact that it was a mobile MOBA game and that the Chinese-owned Tencent was involved.

However, things took a turn for the worse when a number of users pointed out that The Pokemon Company appeared to be removing dislikes in order to make the announcement trailer look more favorable.

A number of users noted that dislikes were actually being deleted with one user even pointing out that the total dislike number had previously been over 160,000.

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Others corroborated that there had previously been over 160,00 dislikes. At least one user noted they had removed over 50,000 dislikes.

The Twitter announcement didn’t fare that much better than what happened on their YouTube Channel. Many fans sarcastically thanked the company for, like the game’s namesake, uniting them against a common cause, Pokemon Unite:

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A number of folks took issue with the Chinese-owned Tencent on Twitter as well.

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As of this moment, no official release date has been confirmed for Pokemon Unite.

What do you think of both the backlash against The Pokemon Company and their partnership with Tencent’s subsidiary TiMi Studios?

Also, do you believe that they are going so far as to delete dislikes on their YouTube page? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

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