Nintendo Punishes Fan Creativity

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been bringing a wealth of content to gamers since launch with constant updates. Additions like museum expansions, familiar NPCs, and swimming have brought fresh air to many islands, revitalizing players’ interest in coming back after burnout. However, a particular update also brought a swath of controversy to New Horizons’ shores.In the most recent summer update, fireworks and the Dream Suite were added to New Horizons. Fireworks are self-explanatory, but the Dream Suite function, accessed by going to sleep in-game, gives players the ability to visit fellow islanders’ custom islands and tour them without the hassle of New Horizons’ online play environment. Dream islands utilize the newly implemented cloud save function,  allowing players to upload the latest version of their island and share it to other players as well as publicly. Functions are limited in this mode, making it more of an island tour than a full-fledged visit. Players can talk with islanders and interact as normal, but are unable to fish, shop, or gather resources like they would during normal online play. Because of the unsavory nature of certain players’ islands, Nintendo included a report function with this mode to let gamers report obscene, offensive, or downright tasteless islands, though, the definition of these terms are completely subjective. Islands with enough reports eventually get deleted by Nintendo and the islands’ owners are thereby notified.However, this report function had another use over these past several days. Players have used it to report islands that have used hacks.Hacks in Animal Crossing are not new. Gamers have been doing it since New Horizons’ early days, and they mainly revolve around cosmetic changes to players’ islands. A popular hack involved replacing bags of money on money trees with colorful star fragments, which give islands a mystical, otherworldly look; an appropriate aesthetic for a feature like dreams.As such, several players and YouTubers took it upon themselves to report these hacked islands to Nintendo, causing these dream islands to be ultimately taken down. Currently, there is no way to appeal for a reversal as these hacks constitute as “cheating” and go against Nintendo’s user agreement. Nintendo has always been notoriously bad when it comes to dealing with fans and community-related projects and activities. From trying to shut down grassroots competitive gaming tournaments to non-profit fan game takedowns, Nintendo always seems to be one step forward and five steps back compared to its peers. This situation is no different. Had Animal Crossing: New Horizons been a competitive multiplayer game, the takedowns would be justified as hacking would give players an edge over others. However, Animal Crossing has always had a huge singleplayer focus, letting players craft the village or island of their dreams. These hacks show the lengths to which people would go to make their islands sparkle and shine. The deletion of players’ dream codes are an unnecessarily harsh punishment for something that harms no one, least of all Nintendo themselves. These takedowns scream of the usual knee-jerk reactions they have to fans when going beyond something’s intended use. Just ask Melee or Project M players. The punishment should fit the crime, and in this case, the only crime was self-expression in a series that values it the most.