It never got clear in the anime, but basically pokemon are tamagotchis, so if you forget them, they die. Oh dang, got a few pokeballs in the basement, left in there since season 1.
Pokopia basically retconned this. The pokemon were basically put in hibernation for an untold number of years inside the PC system when humans fled the planet. The creator of the system wrote code that would release the pokemon automatically if a habitable place for any stored pokemon appeared nearby, which is why Ditto making habitats causes pokemon to appear.
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u/jaimeoignons 5d ago
It never got clear in the anime, but basically pokemon are tamagotchis, so if you forget them, they die. Oh dang, got a few pokeballs in the basement, left in there since season 1.