Hacked dream islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are being taken town by Nintendo, causing a stir within the community. The latest update in the game has brought the addition of the game's version of the Dream Suite, granting the ability to upload islands to the server for anyone to visit.
The service is akin to Nintendo's use of friend codes in that islands are tied to Dream Addresses. Players can search up the Dream Address associated with an island in order to visit it without it actually affecting the island. This service was extremely popular in Animal Crossing: New Leaf for allowing players to upload story towns such as the infamous Aika Village. While the service in New Horizons has removed the ability to enter towns at random or searching them through name, it still offers the same experience of walking through dreams as Animal Crossing: New Leaf did.
However, a new wave of bans have have encroached players for uploading hacked islands, particularly those with star fragment trees, which are impossible to produce in game under normal circumstances. YouTuber Verlisify has uploaded several videos of reporting hacked islands to Nintendo, which has caused others to do the same. Those that have been reported feel as though they're being harassed and blame Verlisify for the bans that they're receiving, and fans have taken to Twitter in order to express their anger.
Many have argued that these reports and bans are unwarranted due to Animal Crossing: New Horizons being an noncompetitive game. Planting star trees doesn't have a significant effect on gameplay for other players, and there's no competitive meta to speak of, therefore some feel that these bans are unfair to those who have worked hard on their towns. Still, Verlisify continues to make videos of him reporting islands of those that are cheating, showing that there is a camp of those that don't approve of any form of cheating in the game. The debate over the ethics of time traveling are also still running rampant on forum sites.
Through this saga, the war over the ethics of cheating in Animal Crossing rages on. While the question of how much cheating is too much is certainly debatable, what's undeniable is the harm these reports are bringing to players, and the devastation they feel upon receiving those emails from Nintendo. It's easy to see why some people are blaming Verlisify for seemingly inspiring a movement that has caused harassment against players for cheating that doesn't affect other players. One can only hope that this ugly chapter in Animal Crossing: New Horizons ends sooner rather than later.
Source: Verlisify, DeckoDecks, pinky_crossing