Pokemon fan's pet fish plays Scarlet and Violet on stream, commits credit card fraud

A tech-savvy fan has set up a YouTube channel that revolves entirely around their fish playing various Pokemon games. A cute setup for sure, though it has now led to one of their fishy friends committing credit card fraud against the poor lad.

As SoraNews24 reports, Mutekimaru Channel's rig works by allowing a fish to swim over a button prompt that translates the action to the Pokemon game of the moment. Scarlet and Violet have proven the natural picks of late, though that's also where the trouble began. 

The stream starts with Mutekimaru's fish toppling Cascarrafa Gym leader Kofu. Once the fish decides to journey out to the desert, though, the game crashes – not uncommon given the latest Pokemon games' widely reported performance issues. That doesn't mean much to the fish, who carry on their merry swim. 

After messing around with some system settings, the fish end up in the Nintendo eShop where they expose some of the channel owner's credit card information to the stream before adding 500 yen (US$3.90) to their wallet. It's not all bad, though, as the fish then went to the Switch Online application to redeem some login bonuses. 

Not an ideal thing to happen on stream, though Mutekimaru has taken it all in good humour. You can check out their video below to see how everything unfolded, alongside the emails they received. 

Mutekimaru’s channel was initially set up at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to tempt people to stay home and slow the spread of the virus. The stream is essentially left to run most of the day, with the fish being rotated every 12 hours “for health reasons”. As you may have pieced together, the streamer isn’t always there, which can prove tricky when your sensitive information is exposed. 

Meanwhile, an original, sealed copy of Pokemon Yellow worth almost $10,500 has reportedly been ruined by US customs.