Update: 01/24/22, 12:31 p.m. ET: Niantic told Kotaku that trading returned to Pokémon Go over the weekend. To make up for lost time, trainers have enjoyed an increase to the maximum number of daily trades for the last few days.
The original story continues below.
Niantic, makers of Pokémon Go, recently disabled trading in its popular augmented-reality game after the discovery of a bug that gave one player a bunch of “lucky” Pokémon via trade (h/t Nintendo Life).
According to a Reddit post made yesterday afternoon, a user named AndKrem was able to amass 100 lucky Pokémon in a short span of time, a statistical impossibility due to how the game normally doles out the bonus.
“Trainers, trading is currently unavailable as we investigate an issue,” Niantic announced on Twitter shortly after the Reddit post started making the rounds online. “We apologize for the inconvenience, and will continue to update here. Thank you for your patience.”
The lucky status is a super-rare Pokémon Go phenomenon wherein a traded Pokémon is gifted better stats and a 50 percent reduction to the resource cost normally required when improving its combat power. Pokémon can become lucky during any trade, but the only time the reward is guaranteed is when exchanging Pokémon with a lucky friend, which the Pokémon Go wiki defines as “a special upgrade to a Best Friend that has a 5% chance of happening when you interact with them for the first time each day.”
AndKrem and their buddy were lucky friends, but for some reason the boon didn’t disappear after a single trade like it should, allowing them to repeatedly trade for lucky Pokémon. The screenshots provided in AndKrem’s post show dozens of Pokémon, all with the tell-tale sparkles behind their models that indicate they’ve been awarded with the helpful status.
“We were both lucky friends when we started and still are,” AndKrem explained in the comments of their thread. “The status as lucky friends didn’t disappear and every trade turned out to be a lucky trade. After the fifth [lucky trade] in a row, we knew something strange [was] happening.”
Pokémon Go trading is still blocked as of this writing. Kotaku contacted Niantic and AndKrem for more details but didn’t hear back before publishing.