Pokémon Masters was rebranded this week, but its developer DeNA clearly didn’t consider what its new name would look like when written as a hashtag.
When most people think of a Pokémon game, one of the many from its mainstream series springs to mind. The games created and developed by Game Freak starting with Red and Blue in the mid-’90s all the way up to the present day with Sword and Shield. However, the franchise has never been afraid to stray away from those tried and true games, now-so more than ever.
Pokémon Unite is coming soon and will be its first foray into the world of MMO, a long-awaited sequel to Pokémon Snap is also on the way, there’s even a Pokémon game designed to encourage children to brush their teeth. Also, almost a year ago to the day, Pokémon Masters was released on mobile. Masters requires trainers to collect and battle with sync pairs.
Speaking of the game’s first anniversary, its developer DeNA has announced a lot of incoming changes and rewards to celebrate its first birthday. They include the ability to battle the Kanto region’s Elite Four, a new sync pair to encounter in the form of Rosa and Snivy, and even a new name for the game. Going forward, Pokémon Masters will be called Pokémon Masters EX.
A cool change for some players, perhaps one that means absolutely nothing to others. That is until they realize what the new name looks like when written as a hashtag. Taking away the game’s capitalization and writing it all as one word creates the rather unfortunate and seemingly misunderstood hashtag #pokemonmastersex. The hashtag was trending on Twitter the last time we checked, and not for the reasons DeNA would want it to be.
Any publicity is good publicity, we guess? It certainly isn’t the worst example of a hashtag that clearly wasn’t flushed out before a company decided to go with it. British singer Susan Boyle’s team wanted to get her fans fired up for the launch of her new album party a few years ago. Unfortunately, Susan Album Party reads as #susanalbumparty when converted into a hashtag. Not the vibe they would have been going for.
