The newly-launched Pokémon Sword and Shield by gaming giant Nintendo for Switch is giving some nuisance trouble for some players. Early adopters went to Reddit and reported that Roku devices are crashing due to Pokémon Sword and Shield.
On the bright side Roku is aware of the issue. The company has issued a separate Reddit thread about Roku devices boot looping, and gave reassurance that their team is working hard to fix the bug as soon as possible.
“We are aware of an issue when using Nintendo Switch and the latest Pokémon game impacting a limited number of Roku devices,” the team wrote. “We are working diligently to resolve this issue. In the meantime, turning off your Nintendo Switch or setting to airplane mode should resolve the issue.”
What Could Have Caused this Bug
A new feature in the recently released Nintendo games uses a feature called Y-Comm. This allows players to trade Pokemon, have Link Battles, and send notifications either locally or online for those who have Switch Online subscriptions. However, to make the process smooth and seamless, the Y-Comm service searches your local network for other players constantly. And this might cause the error as a Roku device would interpret the Pokemon network data as “familiar” and it attempts to read it. Accessing the Pokemon data packets constantly can result in some Roku devices crashing and entering a never-ending boot cycle.
How to Fix Roku Devices Affected by the Pokémon Sword and Shield Bug?
Fortunately, not all Roku models are affected by this bug. However, if you are experiencing this issue, here are some troubleshooting steps you can try on while we wait for the official fix from Roku.
Turn Switch to Airplane Mode
Turning airplane mode on the Switch device is the easiest temporary solution you can do for now. Roku users on Reddit surprisingly found that when they put the Switch into Airplane Mode their devices would load just fine. It is because, Roku won’t be able to send out signals and receive them.
So, turn on Airplane Mode on Switch and start playing Pokémon Sword and Shield again.
Contact Roku for Support
You can also contact Roku through its customer support website to get help directly from them. They might have some other troubleshooting tips they can share with you.
https://support.roku.com/en-gb/contactus
Conclusion
This is a nasty error but we’re glad that Roku is working on a solution as of this moment to properly fix this issue. Please do let us know in the comments below what you think or if you have found another workaround for this bug.