InventiveAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsplayers have created tools and applications to assist the game’s huge community with everything from trading custom designs to planning their terraforming projects, and evenpredicting the weather. Now, one enterprising fan who goes by PokeNinja on Twitter has gone so far as to create a service allowing players to receive any villager they want for free.
Since the game released in March, a black market of sorts has formed around players selling popular villagers like Raymond, the business cat with heterochromia, for in-game resources like Bells and Nook Miles Tickets, or sometimes even real-world currency. The practice is so prevalent thatNintendo itself has commented on black markets, saying it will crack down on sellers and penalize them.
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PokeNinja gained notoriety through the gaming website Polygon in May after he became so disillusioned with the idea of people extorting other players that he beganhacking dream villagers in and giving them awayfor free. On June 20, theAnimal Crossingplayer launched a Discord server called Villager Haven where multiple hackers and community members are teaming up to provide the same service, scaling up the original initiative.
In another article published today by Polygon, PokeNinja said the two most popular villager requests have been Raymond and anotherNew Horizons' newcomer: Judy (though on social media he indicates a personal preference for Lucky and Fang). He said that if the project does draw Nintendo’s attention and gets his console banned, he believes in the service of combatingsellers on eBay and other websitesenough that he would happily break out another Switch and continue.
On Twitter today, PokeNinja said the Villager Haven team has already doubled since launch, and if it continues to escalate they will be able to help “hundreds of players a day.” He said there’s a stigma against being a hacker that makes people not want to talk about, but he wants to “shine the light on the good side of hacking” through this service inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons.
Though the chill life simulation game has dipped in popularity on social media, it still has a huge install base as the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game of all time. In fact, the title has become so popular during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that anin-game talk show now hosts guests like Kevin Smith and Sting.
