Pokémon TCG Live April Maintenance Issues and Content Schedule Changes

TPCi_GlowingMoon

Hello everyone,

We wanted to give you a quick update—our live game servers have been experiencing higher-than-normal latency across the board in areas like gameplay, inventory, code redemption, and shop offers. After seeing this significant impact, we’ve decided to take the game offline for a bit longer than usual. We know this isn’t ideal, but we want to make sure the experience meets the standards you deserve.

Because of the extended downtime, we’re making a couple of schedule adjustments:

• The March ranked ladder will be extended
• The Gym Leader Challenge Trainer Trial will be delayed

Let’s get into the “why” of these changes. First up: We want to make sure everyone has a fair shot at finishing their climb and grabbing those exclusive Iono’s Bellibolt deck accessories—so we’re extending the current ranked ladder!

The ranked ladder will now stay open until 10AM PT (17:00 UTC) on Saturday, April 26th.

Secondly: We’ve been so excited to bring you the debut of the Gym Leader Challenge Trainer Trial, but we also want to make sure it launches in the best possible shape. To ensure a smooth and high-quality experience, we’ve made the tough call to postpone its debut by two weeks and swap it with the next Trainer Trial on the schedule.

So, when the game comes back online on April 24th, you’ll be jumping into the Silver Series instead—a unique challenge where you’ll build decks using only Common, Uncommon, and Rare cards from the Scarlet & Violet series.

Here’s the updated Trainer Trials schedule:
(All Trials reset at 10AM Pacific Time, or 17:00 UTC)

• Silver Series
  • Start: April 24, 2025 (or as soon as maintenance ends)
  • End: May 8, 2025
• Gym Leader Challenge
  • Start: May 8, 2025
  • End: May 22, 2025

Here's what happened: We’ve been hard at work on an exciting milestone update for Pokémon TCG Live, originally scheduled for April 23, 2025 as part of our commitment to continually improve and expand the game. This update includes some major improvements, like:

• An enhanced first-time player experience tuned for the new rotation
• The launch of the Gym Leader Challenge with the latest card bans
• Fixing an issue where match disabling match timers in a friend match wasn’t working.
• Adjusted Ranked Ladder Elo behavior based on observed trends to improve matchmaking performance.
• Fixing an issue that was allowing Iono's Kilowattrel's (JTG #055) Flashing Draw Ability to be used when there were no cards in the deck.
• Fixing an issue where using Slowbro's (SVI #043) Strange Behavior Ability had an animation issue when many damage counters were shown.

As always with major updates, the game entered maintenance so we could safely apply these changes. However, once we came back online, we saw unexpected and significant issues—slow performance across the board, problems with shop items and code redemption, and unstable match quality.

These problems weren’t seen in any of our prior QA verification passes, and we’ve been actively working on solutions behind the scenes. While we’ve tried a few fixes, none have brought the stability we need—especially with the Gym Leader Challenge on the horizon, which we know will draw lots of activity. We want this beloved format to shine, and right now, we can’t guarantee the high-quality experience it deserves.

We’re continuing to investigate and reconfigure our servers to address these issues, but we’re not ready to give an exact timeline yet. That said, we do have a lot of exciting things planned for May, and we’re hopeful we’ll be back on track soon.

We know how much this community cares about the game—and we care just as much about being transparent with you. Today marks a step forward in keeping you more in the loop, and we’re committed to improving that communication moving forward.

Thanks so much for your patience, your support, and for being a part of this journey with us. We’ll see you in-game again soon.

The Pokémon TCG Live Development Team