The Pokémon series has always encouraged players to look after their Pokémon, lift them right and defend against the clutches of Team Rocket.
The Pokémon series does not suggest that you genetically modify your Pokémon friends and then sell them for money. Nintendo also does not want to do so.
That brings us to today and the arrest of a 23-year-old Japanese man alleged to have hacked and sold a Sobble.
Asahi News (via Kotaku) reports that the unnamed man was caught selling the modified Sobble for 4400 yen (about £ 30) to another player, and then made a confession.
But it goes beyond Sobble. The man, who is currently unemployed, allegedly earned 1.1 million yen (about £ 8,000) which sold thousands of such adapted creatures. This probably caught the attention of the authorities.
Today, the Japanese police proudly displayed the computer used to customize the Pokémon in question:
Only last week, The Pokémon Company issued a sternly worded warning to hackers of Pokémon Sword, Shield and the cloud-based storage service Pokémon Home.
“We have confirmed that some users are playing Pokémon Sword Shield and Pokémon Home using illegally modified data,” the company wrote. “We will regularly monitor and respond to fraudulent and annoying acts so that our users can enjoy themselves with peace of mind. We look forward to your continued support of the Pokémon Series.”