Animal Crossing: New Horizons hilariously slashes in-game interest rates

Like the finest trolls, Nintendo has neglected to tell gamers why they slashed rates in the first place, and how much by. Thankfully, several savvy players have run experiments and the general estimate is that the current rate is down from 0.5% to 0.05%, with payouts capped at 9,999 bells following the update. 

Kotaku’s Ethan Gach shifted the game’s real-time clock forward to May 2021 before and after the update to compare his interest yield from around 1.1 mill in savings. The pre-update grift yielded a hefty 63,571 bells, while the same exploit after the update earned a meagre 6,579 bells.  

A number of redditors are convinced Nintendo has gone full The Dark Knight’s Joker in lockdown, but truthfully there is probably a good reason for the new update. Anyone who picked up Animal Crossing and invested a few hundred hours in it will know the world was previously rife with opportunity for hijinks. Players were amassing huge fortunes through farming tarantula islands and playing the Stalk Market for highly lucrative turnips. And the time travel feature allowed them to rake in huge numbers in interest.

Now it’s pretty much a level playing field, and everyone has to watch their savings grow at a snail’s pace just like in real life. See? Not much in the way of escapism.