Animal Crossing: New Horizons gains a dark underbelly

People have set up huge online clubs that predict when these lucrative turnips will be at their highest rate in your particular game, and when to visit other player’s islands at the peak of their market price. A little entry fee at the door and in you go to exploit someone else’s market while they chill in their mansion like a 64-bit Jordan Belfort. 

Elsewhere, players are being forced to enlist bouncers who ensure visitors are on your island to explore and have fun, not to smash up hours worth of aesthetic improvements and trample flowers. But some of these bouncers are also demanding sweeteners on top of original trade promises. If they’re not paid, the visitors are blocked in the island store. Greedy! 

However shady those practices are though, I bet you never for a single second considered that human trafficking would be an issue Nintendo were forced to contend with. Non playable characters within the game such as Marina, Octavian, and Zucker (or rare rhinos and cows) are ending up on eBay auctions for upward of £50 and are then lured to the buyer’s island never to leave. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Surely that breaks Nintendo’s terms of service?’ And you’d be right. But, once again people are sidestepping the issue by trading with turnips and bells. This doesn’t even happen on GTA! 

We’ll see how Nintendo react to the latest slew of debauchery. I just feel sorry for the dev department… they’re probably slumped around reading legalese 101 as we speak.