Pokémon Go Community In Chaos After Company Upholds Disqualification Of Player Who Celebrated Too Hard

After a period of deliberation, Play! Pokémon—the Pokémon Company subsidiary that seems to believe Panic! At The Disco was really onto something—has reached a verdict in the curious case of Firestar73, aka the Pokémon Go pro who celebrated too hard. This week, it announced that it’ll be upholding its previous decision, meaning that Firestar73 remains disqualified after technically winning the 2026 Pokémon Orlando Regional Championships. To say that Pokémon Go pros and fans are dissatisfied would be an understatement.

In a statement on two rulings—the other of which took place during a separate trading card game tournament—Play! Pokémon said the following of Firestar73’s situation:

During the Pokémon Go Grand Finals, we would like to share some information which may not be known to the broader community. Prior to the final game incident, during game one of the bracket reset series, a player was issued a Warning for the action of hitting and shaking the table during gameplay. Actions such as these can have a negative impact on the experience of participants and disturb the match in progress. Then, during game five, this same player’s behavior continued to be disruptive, including shaking the table to the point that there was a disruption to the broadcast experience. These repeated infractions resulted in a penalty that was escalated to Game Loss.

We will uphold the decisions made by the Judges at this event. Pokémon Judges are committed to bringing the best possible experience to our players by preserving the competitive integrity of our events. Without them and their commitment to Play! Pokémon, we would not be able to hold events, and it is our expectation that they are treated with the same respect as all people in the community.

However, in the same statement, Play! Pokémon went on to encourage the act of celebration more generally:

In the moment of a win, emotions are high, and we recognize that these emotions can lead to energetic reactions celebrating a win. We want to support this authentic, positive reaction, and not discourage this excitement. Celebrations are not an issue, but actions that disrupt or can negatively impact competitive integrity can be.

That’s nice and vague, but sure! Moreover, it now sounds like Firestar73 was disqualified for playing the game too hard, not celebrating—or that a prior infraction of playing too hard informed judges’ decision to later disqualify him for celebrating too hard, even though those are two different things. On top of all that, it is very difficult to hold completely still during a heated Pokémon Go match.

“Pokémon Go is literally an action-based game,” Smash Bros pro and Team Liquid co-owner Hungrybox wrote on Twitter. “Players [are] constantly tapping the screen nonstop for about five minutes per game. It’s natural to have some exasperation.”

Firestar73, meanwhile, has disputed Play! Pokémon’s account of events entirely.

“The ‘incident’ you are now, for the first time, claiming was the basis of the decision did not affect the gameplay at all, yet decided the whole tournament,” he wrote on Twitter. “Section 2.1 requires a ‘clear explanation of any infraction and its penalty,’ and I was never given this as the basis at all.”

NiteTimeClasher, who won the tournament by disqualification, doesn't seem pleased either. "Was not my decision," he appears to have written in a Pokémon Discord. "Firestar is the Orlando regional champion. Hope you all understand."

Others have attempted to divine what the company meant by a “disruption to the broadcast experience,” and what they’ve found doesn’t look all that severe.

Not long after Play! Pokémon handed down its edict, one judge who was not involved in this particular match, Professor Rex, publicly voiced his outrage.

“As a judge I’m not supposed to discuss ruling[s] publicly,” he wrote. “However, I also believe that as a judge my job is to give players a fair space to compete. If a player in a high stakes battle can lose out on thousands of dollars for shaking the table, what kind of space have we built? If the table can’t handle the intensity of the competition, that’s not the players’ fault. I’ve judged multiple Go regionals, [and] I just can’t support how this was handled.”

After posting internal correspondence meant for judges and asking “some questions they didn’t like” in the Discord for those who judge and otherwise help out at Pokémon events, Rex was banned from the Discord. That’s when, to the extent they had not already, things spun out of control. Rex went on to share judges’ personal information in a perhaps-misguided attempt at forcing transparency, which caused other judges—some of whom mostly agreed with him—to call him out and take issue with his conduct. As of now, almost no one is happy.

It’s everybody’s favorite kind of mess: the kind in which no one emerges looking entirely good. Hopefully this will at least convince Play! Pokémon to reevaluate what it considers excessive celebration—if not its approach to certain elements of judging more broadly—but given the ruling it settled on, that doesn’t strike me as entirely likely. Then again, firestorms have a way of making people second guess themselves down the line, and I imagine Play! Pokémon will feel the burn from this one for some time to come.