Gamers around the world continue to enjoy the relaxed, tropical atmosphere of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Amidst worldwide stress and quarantine regulations, the laid-back life simulator couldn’t have released at a better time.
Unfortunately, players have recently discovered a major glitch involving the cute, colorful animal villagers who inhabit New Horizons’ world.
One of the game’s features allows players to invite new villagers to their island using a feature called the Campsite. The Campsite can be used both to force current residents to leave your island and to invite new residents to take their place, including those obtained via scanning Animal Crossing Amiibo figures. With only ten plots available on the island for villagers to inhabit, this feature has been instrumental in helping players create their ideal island environment.
Once a villager has been asked to leave one island, they can then be “adopted” by another player. However, adopting these players can come with an extremely annoying glitch. The villager will never arrive, and the plot of land marked off as theirs will remain occupied by building materials. A glitched sign on the plot will simply read “This spot reserved for ‘s new home,” without the villager’s name being included.
These glitched plots are extremely difficult to remove. A PSA post on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Reddit community outlines a complex workaround process which may solve the issue. However, the original poster warns that it may not always work.
Developer Nintendo has apparently been informed of this glitch, and are working to fix it. However, it is possible that a patch will take several days or even weeks to release.
Nintendo was quick to patch out an earlier bug, in which in-game items could be duplicated infinitely. Hopefully, they will respond in a similarly swift and efficient manner to this new, potentially game-ruining issue.
In the meantime, if you wish to invite friends’ villagers to move to your island, ensure that they left of their own accord before officially adopting them. This can be accomplished by asking the other player to provide a screenshot showing the player “thinking about leaving,” which indicates that they were not required to move via the Campsite feature.
We hope that this bug is patched soon and does not affect your enjoyment of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
