When Pokémon TCG Pocket’s trading functionality was first teased last year, it sounded like it could become a solid way to keep players coming back to the game. Trading seemed like the logical next step toward making Pocket’s Social Hub feel more robust and exciting for players looking to complete their collections. But now that it’s out, everything about Pocket’s trading feature makes it feel like a tedious system designed to milk money out of players in ways that are antithetical to what actually makes the game fun and accessible. 

Trading has always been a core part of the Pokémon franchise and a relatively straightforward process where all players have to do is find other people looking to swap monsters, link up, and agree on which specific creatures they want to exchange. To a certain extent, that’s also true of Pokémon TCG Pocket, which has encouraged players to make friends and gift each other bits of in-game currency by saying “thanks” after battles.

But trading in Pokémon TCG Pocket has so many restrictions and requirements that it’s hard to imagine players actually having fun with the process or seeing it as anything other than another ploy to get t …

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