At the end of September, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced a partnered giveway with GameStop. Until Oct. 15, Shiny versions of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet‘s legendary mascots will be given away from physical GameStop stores in the US and at EB Games in Australia, and New Zealand. Participating local stores in other countries, like Japan and France, have also been added to the promotion.
However, the giveaway flopped before it even began — Pokémon fans reported their local stores had run out of codes in the days leading up to the promotion. Now, about halfway through the giveaway period, GameStop has restocked codes, but odds are your local store is out of them already.
On Saturday Oct. 4, GameStop announced a code restock on X. “Due to overwhelming demand, the first wave of free Shiny Koraidon and Shiny Miraidon code cards went very quickly,” the company’s statement read. GameStop worked with The Pokémon Company to make more codes available, but there’s a catch. “Pokémon has given us a limited number of receipt codes, approximately 50 per store.”
Stores initially received 50 codes, though they quickly ran through them. Despite the promotion limiting the codes to one per person, some individual eBay listings went up with multiple codes for sale. That’s remained true for this second batch of codes. One of the top replies on X says, “These codes right?” alongside screenshots of eBay listings for the codes, with at least one having multiple available.
Some players were able to snag codes over the weekend from their local stores, while others weren’t so lucky. “Waiting on 3rd chance now. Just called my GameStop. They’re out of codes (again),” one redditor commented, before other players stepped up and gave them spare codes for Shiny Koraidon and Shiny Miraidon.
Why the Shiny box legendaries weren’t earned through a Tera Raid battle or given away online via Mystery Gift remains unknown. For now, you’ll have to head to your local store and hope they still have codes left if you want a Shiny Koraidon or Shiny Miraidon.
