You’re less likely to catch a Pokémon in the fourth-gen games on 9/11 than you are on any other day, according to a new leak.
A little while ago, the source code for Pokémon Diamond & Pearl leaked. Some hackers took it off Nintendo’s servers and now it’s out there in the wild. So far, this hasn’t really resulted in many great insights or controversies, but one Twitter user seems to have made an interesting observation buried in the code.
User @shinyhunter_map notes that the spawn rates in Diamond & Pearl change depending on certain special days. On days that are marked by tragedy, such as the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings or 9/11, the overall spawn rate of Pokémon decreases by 10%. World spawn rates also decrease by 5% on certain holidays, such as Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes.
Conversely, spawn rates for all Pokémon actually increase by 5% on other holidays, such as Christmas Eve, Independence Day, St Patrick’s Day, and Armistice/Veteran’s Day.
It’s hard to guess what the point of these changing spawn rates was really for. On the one hand, you could say that Nintendo is trying to discourage playing their games on days marked for solemn contemplation of a great tragedy, but then they’re also trying to encourage playing Pokémon on days marked by social celebration like Christmas Eve or St Patrick’s Day.
We’re also not sure if this is a tradition that’s been kept up in modern Pokémon games. Might we secretly get a spawn rate buff on July 4th in Sword & Shield?
Source: Twitter, GameRant
