PTCG: Do not reward loyalty with luck.
TL;DR: Please, don’t do a lottery. This is a love letter from a player who genuinely wants this game to succeed.
Backstory:
Players who enjoyed the game between October 30, 2024, and January 30, 2025 were given an Advance Ticket, a nice gesture meant to celebrate early supporters.
Fast forward to now: a quiet post on X announces that those tickets automatically enroll players into a lottery.
Out of more than 10 million downloads (as of November 3, 2024), only:
100 players will win 1st place
10,000 players will win 2nd place
And everyone else gets 3rd place
First off: Why a lottery?
Your first-anniversary video proudly highlights how much we’ve done together, packs opened, trades made, showcases completed, all under the banner “Count Your Pocket Memories.”
So why celebrate a year of collective memories with something that relies entirely on chance?
A lottery doesn’t count our memories it erases them.
Instead of a random draw, you could have done something that truly fit the anniversary theme:
Reward players based on activity, collaboration, or creativity
Let us gift a duplicate card to a friend
Recognize veteran players with unique badges or legacy rewards
Or, at the very least, verify that the winners still play and share their stories
Anything would have been more meaningful than this disconnected, “cheap” solution that says, “We didn’t think this through.”
Second: What to take away:
This isn’t outrage, it’s passion. My friends, my son, and I all play Pokémon TCG Pocket. We love it. We battle together, trade together, and talk about our pulls like they’re shared adventures.
Please, when you design events like this, view them through that lens the community’s lens.
Celebrate connection, not randomness.
Reward loyalty, not luck.
Because a “mysterious ticket” that turns into a half-baked lottery feels like a slap in the face to those who have supported you from the very beginning.
You have something special here. Don’t let poorly planned events dull that spark.
Learn from this, engage with your players, and next time, make it truly about counting our pocket memories.
This is how I feel, please let me know what your take on this is.