Question

How can I play Gen 8 Pure Hackmons on Pokémon Showdown?

Comments

I had same question couple days ago

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You can get battles in the Old Shark Room [ https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/oldshark ], which is a private room in PS!. It mostly focuses on Older Gens of Hackmons, but Galar PH is also played there.
Or you can try the Other Metas Room [ https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/othermetagames ] too, but the userbase there doesn't give a tad about PH lol.
Sometimes, the Tournaments and Tours Plaza Rooms conduct some RoomTours, so you can join those rooms as well.
It also recently got an LCoTM Ladder, and also got one in the past. You can wait some months to get a ladder for it again.

Answer 1

You have to challenge a user to play Pure Hackmons, or there might be a tournament in Tours Plaza or Tournaments. You can ask for battles in Old Shark.

Source and Assault Ποσειδώνας's comment

Answer 2

Update: Gen 8 Pure Hackmons is no longer a legal tier on Showdown.

Two major exploits had been discovered for Pokemon Sword and Shield around late-2021. These exploits would have shown to drastically shift the Pokemon Sword and Shield Pure Hackmons metagame into an even worse state than Overflow left it.

• Before the other two exploits were discovered, overflow had already left the SS PH metagame in a state of considerable turmoil. The metagame had transformed solely to Three Eternatus-Eternamax + two Regieleki with a filler slot, and it became one of the least popular OMs. OHKO moves also became the norm on every team, and the addition of multi-OHKO moves on every team made it difficult to progress.

• After the tier got a bit stabilised, mainly due to the addition of a ladder (through OMoTM), there were a few new Pokémon experimented which changed the tier from a hellhouse to a bit tolerable OHKO spam. Two months after the VR Council had bettered the Viability Rankings, a new exploit was discovered which made hackable formats without restrictions suffocating to play. You can read about the exploit in the above link or another of my questions. The crux is that you can send a Pokémon so it appears to be Dynamaxed, but it is still able to use its regular moves and Dynamax.

• If that wasn't enough, HP Editing now exists in local battles, which, eventually, means that it would be added to Showdown as well. Now a Pokemon's HP can be edited to a maximum of 65,536 and used in local battles through hacking. HP Editing affected the metagame very similarly to how pre-Dynamax does, except to a bigger extent. Water Spout, Eruption, and Dragon Energy would be able to have 65,536 Base Power at maximum and almost every Pokemon can be threatened by these moves. Eternatus-Eternamax can once again overflow to 0 SpD to avoid these moves and it will continue to tank every physical Shell Smash sweeper in the metagame.

These two exploitations had left the Generation 8 Pure Hackmons metagame into nothing more than a complete OHKO fest. Very few Pokémon will be viable if or whenever these exploitations get implemented on PS. The constant downward spiral the metagame took since this it became the official PH generation has left Sword and Shield Pure Hackmons no longer worth playing.

Now, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will serve as the primary host for Generation 8 Pure Hackmons. Incidentally, Pure Hackmons was the only metagame to do this.

To play BDSP Pure Hackmons, you can either ask for battles in the Old Shark room on Showdown or in the Pure Hackmons Discord. I'm personally invested in this metagame, so I'm always free to battle.

Answer 3

Update v2: Gen 8 Pure Hackmons is now playable on Showdown.

A "new definition" of Pure Hackmons sparked the process of the deletion of BDSP Hackmons and the revival of Eternamax.

From now on, anything directly hackable onto a set (EVs, IVs, forme, ability, item, and move) and is usable in local battles are allowed. This new premise redirects the focus of Pure/Balanced Hackmons to the Pokémon themselves; meaning that we're only taking all Pokémon already programmed into the respective game a Pure/Balanced Hackmons format is based on and allowing anything that can be hacked onto their set.

Source

Sword and Shield Pure Hackmons will now be available to play on PS! through roomtours and challenges. You can get battles in the Old Shark room.

The game would still work around the flirtatious 30% accuracy OHKO moves, though, as Overflow still exists, as it isn't a hack. Eternamax can't be banned, too, as it's programmed as a regular Pokemon forme having its own set of base stats and moves, unlike the Dynamax/Gigintamax formes. There still isn't any homogeneous winning strategy, the metagame is back to almost what it was pre-BDSP.

SS replaced BDSP as the host for Generation 8 Hackmons because BDSP isn't faring any better. It's a single-Pokémon metagame and not very interesting or open for newer users.

Another reason they gave for the comeback was way deeper and more coherent:

Additionally, since the video on Pure Hackmons made by freezai, there has been an upward spiral of demand for this format to be playable again.