Pokémon Pokopia has been out for a little under two weeks, and prominent fansite Serebii has been racing to document every Pokémon, habitat, recipe, and secret in Game Freak and Omega Force’s life sim. But now that the site has completed the bulk of the work, copycats are scraping the information for their own use, including an app that Serebii webmaster Joe Merrick claims has been scraping the site’s information for profit after he put over 200 hours of work into playing and documenting the game.
Merrick has posted on his X account about a mobile app called Pokopedia, which positions itself as a companion app where Pokopia players can look up information about monster habitats, specialities, and much more. While the app designers could have found all this information themselves, as Merrick points out, the app appears to be scraping information from Serebii’s guides, as it seems to reflect some of the same omissions the site had while Merrick was building its database. For instance, the app fails to indicate that Snivy and Larvesta possess the Litter speciality, which Serebii also initially omitted in error.
I accidentally left Litter off Snivy and Larvesta a few days aog. This app has that same issue. All images are ripped from my site or using the HOME images (which I used until last week) pic.twitter.com/CpOMFP8ff4
— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) March 16, 2026
Pokopedia has been shared by some prominent Pokémon creators who either don’t seem to be aware of the accusations being made against the app developer or don’t care about Serebii’s claims. Merrick says that he has experienced this kind of theft before during other Pokémon game launches, but Pokopia’s virality has caused it to spread much more quickly than usual.
This is so exhausting. Like it happens here and there with prior launches but due to how Pokopia has gone crazy viral, it's happening in such volume.
With 200 hours work behind me on it, seeing my work just lifted and, in the case of the app, being used to make money…it hurts.
— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) March 16, 2026
The app, which includes an option to make a one-time $8.99 purchase to remove ads, is made by developer Hugo Duarte, who also made a similar app for Stardew Valley. Duarte has removed any mention of Pokopedia on his X account, but we have reached out to him for comment on the situation and will update the story if we hear back.
Update: 3/17/26, 10:06 a.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, Duarte says he used information from publicly available resources such as Serebii to update the app, and is working to add a source attribution within the app. He also notes that the response has escalated beyond criticism to “coordinated harassment,” which is why he’s chosen to step away from situation. The full statement is as follows:
Pokopedia is a companion app I built as a solo developer. I started working on it well before the game’s release, using information gathered from trailers and official news. I got the game on day one and began adding data I collected myself. At some point there was just too much data for one person to cover, so I started using other publicly available community sources, Serebii among them. When a trusted source contains an error, that error can naturally carry over, which is what happened here.
I have a lot of respect for the work Joe Merrick has put into Serebii and I’m open to a direct conversation with him to address his concerns. I’m currently working on adding proper source attribution within the app.
I’d also like to note that the response to this situation has gone well beyond fair criticism. I’ve received coordinated harassment, which is why I’ve decided to step away from the situation for now.
English (US) ·