The island paradise of Animal Crossing: New Horizons was recently upgraded with returning features and seasonal events – sleepwalking to faraway islands via the Dream Suite and gazing up at the sky during August’s weekly Firework Festivals. Little did we know that the Dream Suite would summon nightmares instead and flood Nintendo’s reporting system for the game.

Back in May, some island representatives were showing off hacked items that decorated their islands on social media. The hacked “item” that stole the show for many were Bell trees that were modified to hold star fragments, fossils, K.K. Slider song notes, and more. These hacked trees did go against Nintendo’s terms of service, but Nintendo Support wasn’t going through each island and removing the hacks (or outright deleting the island) then. Eventually, these trees would be reverted back to their original form, but it always a matter of when and not if.

That question can be answered now. The time was Wednesday, August 5th, 2020 when Nintendo sent out Version 1.4.1 Update. A small patch, but it did plenty of damage to the Animal Crossing: New Horizons community. Below are the patch notes:

Ver. 1.4.1 (Released August 5, 2020)

The software has been updated if you see “Ver. 1.4.1” in the upper-right corner of the title screen.

General updates

• The following issues that occurred in Ver. 1.4.0 have been fixed:
• Fixed an issue where trees could mature and contain things other than the normal fruit, etc.
• Fixed an issue where shining soil disappears after returning to your own island after a dream and buried Bells appear in that location instead.
• Fixed an issue where the player swings their shovel through the air when attempting to hit a rock placed at a certain location.

 

Anyone who advertised their island’s Dream Suite code and had the hacked trees present were hunted down by a small, but vocal group of players. Thus, allegedly, causing Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ report system to be inundated with complaints about how the island breaks Nintendo’s terms of service. The first fix around this was Nintendo deleting Dream Suite versions of the reported islands, but that has now turned into the items being patched out completely. 

We don’t know if the New Horizons hacking community will find a workaround or if Nintendo will officially add these trees (or a version of them) into the game permanently at some point, but we can only hope for the latter.

 

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