Fan Petition Asks Nintendo To Allow Backup Game Saves In Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It probably won't be work, but I wish them luck.

Not sure Mr Resetti will be too happy with that one. 😀

I just wish there is NO stupid Rules that force players to play Animal Crossing for eternity or we will lose the animal villagers if we stop playing the game.
Just give us some break and hiatus for a moment. We want to play other games, not just Animal Crossing.
Luckily, i have figured it out how to get hiatus from ACNL without losing any animal villagers.

Nintendos cloud saves might as well not exist. The most important games, which are based on long playtime, collecting and personalizing don't support it. lol

LOL It's insanely stupid that Nintendo disallows cloud saves for the games that'd benefit most from them.

I love you, Nintendo, but, on this issue, you're being infuriating dum-dums.

The fact that someone is having to make a petition like this shows how difficult Nintendo makes things.

I honestly am pretty sure no one cares if some one cheats in Animal Crossing. Heck, I don't eve care if they use save game cheats in Splatoon 2 if I'm entirely honest.

I don't like what Nintendo is doing. I'm going to go to change.org and get a bunch of people to sign my petition to make them change their mind!

Well there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to not allow it other than Nintendo being Nintendo

some people clearly have not understood what this game is about. there is a reason why you are not supposed to cheat with the real time connection of your gameworld

@6ch6ris6 well maybe if it didn't take too long to get what you want, like who's got time to wait 6 months to beat the game because you dont have certain items?

@6ch6ris6
Um.... 😳
I have "cheated" a lot with my ACNL 3DS, mostly about changing the date / day / time, getting specific desired animal villagers, maintaining my town without losing my animal villagers due to their will to Move Out.

There are a lot of reason why did i manipulate the time, getting desired villagers, keep my villagers stay forever:
1. The time. Sometimes i cannot play ACNL everyday so i need to break or hiatus. Sometimes i want to experience with different time due to my schedules that forced me to not play at the time i want to play ACNL. Sometimes i want to stop playing ACNL but i don't want to lose my villagers so i have to make sure i forbid them to Move Out then i save the game and i can leave my games hiatus until i activate my town again. If i just follow the timeline, i can miss some events or probably lost my desired villagers due to Move Out. I don't want villager cycling because i have chose them to be mine forever and i don't want Random ugly villagers take over my town.
I did time travel not because i want to get rich, but i want to speed up the process of getting rid of my unwanted villagers or i cannot play on certain time or i want to shuffle the possibility of the objects i can buy from the Shops.

2. Don Resetti get upset to me just because i forgot to Save, for me it was my decision by intentionally and when he was scolding me due to my intention, i want to yell at him "Shut Up! It was my will to redo something wrong. I lost my progress and so what?! None of your business!! Just shut up old man! "
If i quit without saving by intentionally, that means i want to Redo something due to my dissatisfaction.

@wazlon he's ok, he'll get a new job :3

I mean, I know why people like cloud saves. But we didn't have them on like, any previous Nintendo product and I don't recall people having serious problems before.

I haven't even heard of people losing their saves with Switch any more than usual hardware issues.

Also has anything with Change.org ever actually happened? I hear about it fairly often, but I can't think of a time where it worked.

@BenAV but that's the fun part when you start a new game. You can redo all your mistakes before and make your new save even better. Lol. But I do get what you're saying. But it's not always wrong to start over

@Heavyarms55 You could back-up your save-game on the 3DS to your SD card. On Gamecube you could copy your memory-card. Obviously if we were able to back-up the save-games from the Switch ourselves, nobody would be complaining, but sadly you can't.

@Heavyarms55 everything after the n64 had save backups

I understand that they're trying to prevent people from scamming the game by using save backups, but there has to be a way to make it work on both ends. And as @Anti-Matter points out above, you can already perpetrate plenty of scams by playing with the system clock or quitting without saving. To me, more AC gamers would accept save backups in exchange for letting others exploit those backups.

Yeah I don't see this happening. It's the same with people that complain about Sword & Shield, we're going to be buying the game if they change it or not so why should they care?

Sad but true

Petitions usually don’t work, but I hope this one does. Animal Crossing New Horizons is a game that should have the cloud feature. Sometimes I don’t want to start my town from scratch again.

@Kimyonaakuma for Pokémon it’s really easy to see why. You would be able to copy any Pokémon or item if they’d allow it.

Simple-minded fans will always hate not having it their way, if they are lucky maybe Nintendo might try to please them in some way but i doubt is possible due to too many grey areas regarding cloud storage interfering with core mechanics in the game that can expose the game to cheating and hacks.

@TheLightSpirit it's not just the petition, it's important that everyone let their concerns know to Nintendo, via the Web Chat or calling Nintendo... just signing and going won't do much. The petition helps a lot in showing numbers and raising awareness about this.

@Heavyarms55 I've heard of many accidents happening to the Switch, most involving kids or falls. The worst case I read about was a guy that had to erase his entire data because one day he just couldn't connect to the internet, he called Nintendo and as it turns out, they had updated their servers previously and some players were affected this way. I don't see why not, it's a service that we're paying for and it's something that has been the industry "standard" since 2011.

Nintendo restricting cloud saves is reason to grump and demand better.

However, AC is like the one series where even having a backup feels ridiculously antithetical to the whole concept of the game. And it’s such a low stakes experience that it’s like... just relax and enjoy life, peeps.

I have never used a cloud save in my life. What exactly are the kids crying about now?

@Browny I don't know, I think the fact that it's so relaxing makes it easy to get attached to your town. Most of what you do in the game is collect and sell things to afford new additions to your town, creating a gameplay loop where you put work into the game, achieve things and make choices about your town that make it different than other people's towns. Especially as a kid, it becomes easy to be attached to your particular town. Losing my town as a kid would have been a minor tragedy, so I see why a backup would be good.

Local backups to the SD card would be great.

@Browny I agree. The people who obsessively manage every little detail of their town couldn’t possibly find AC to be a relaxing experience if they found themselves not being able to play every day.

Wrong way to ask. Just put up a post in any social media and say that not including that is racist and they'll change it in no time. A simple spell, but quite unbreakable.

Never played a Animal Crossing. Is it as relaxing to play as i think it is?

NL why do you post about petitions here yet delete those we create awareness of in the forum? Referring to the re-release of thousand year door I posted recently...

They better not

Nintendo needs to allow local save data back ups like Microsoft and Sony do.

@Yorumi N64 didn't really allow local back ups. Either it required a memory card, or it saved on the cart. IIRC only Perfect Dark had both.

Short answer: nope.

The same should have been done to Dark Souls, Pokémon and Splatoon 2. There’s no excuse for locking save backups in first place, since cheating can be avoided by limiting how many times per week/month one can restore a save.

This won’t work

@Anti-Matter you can simply stop playing for as long as you want. Your neighbors will not leave unless they were already scheduled to move out.

@Yorumi third party maybe.

If you are going to get New Horizons and you haven't signed this petition, do it. Imagine you spend days on end making the best your island can be and one day your switch just doesn’t turn on.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/04/12/a-hacker-just-fixed-the-biggest-problem-with-nintendo-switch/

Paying the online service is the only way to backup. Every first party games should be compatible, I've lost all my saves with my wiiu and it's one of my worst memory has a gamer, after losing more than 200 hours of wonderful101 I just never played it, same with tropical freeze after losing my file near the end with almost every level 100% completed I just couldn't start again and never played it again too. I don't wanna lose my saves. I have 400h on ACNL, it's a game I will never start again but keep playing in My town that I spend hours building. Nintendo needs to do something about the backups on switch.

You don't truely love the game. If you are not willing to play it again if you lost your save.

it might not work or it might work.
but if it doesn't then my sister will smash her desk. jk jk

@StableInvadeel
Here are something that i have figured it out about Moving Out on ACNL.

1. If you play your town without getting any "Blink" reaction from any villager then you don't play for more than 10 days, one of your villager is already Moving Out without addressing to you.

2. If you find out one of your villager want to Move Out, answer them to stay then if you Save your game and quit from the game, your villagers will NOT Moving Out whatsoever so you can get hiatus from ACNL as long as you want.

3. If you play again with your town after long hiatus, on that day also you activated your town there is one of your villager want to Move Out in 10 days. To figured it out who will Move Out after you activate your town just simply talk to all villagers you find in your town. If you still cannot find other villagers, Quit and Save then Load again your town. Here, you will find another villagers you haven't talked yet. Talk to them. And if you suddenly hear a "Blink" reaction and one of them try to talk to you, talk to them and if they want to Move Out, answer them to stay. From here, if you still want to continue your town progress, make sure you pay attention with your villagers. But if you want to get hiatus again, just simply Quit and Save then quit from the game so you can leave your ACNL as long as you want again.

Btw...
From what i saw about hacked Save Data on ACNL, the reasons Nintendo restrict us to back up our Save Data due to hacking the Save data for Manipulating the villager's house position, getting the golden tools, placing the town objects on free way, etc.

For me, the stupid restriction on ACNL for Randomized town display, random encounter villager's house position, random villagers who will move in were the reasons peoples want to manipulate the randomness into something fixed based on player's decision. They want to control where was the desired location of villager's house position without ruining something, they want specific desired animal villagers, they want to customize the town freely without stupid restrictions.

So, for AC New Horizons, if the game still have some stupid restrictions, i'm sure peoples will try to hack the Save Data for desired results. Just give us some Freedom to customize our town without any total randomness, an option to decide who will stay or kick out villagers from our town without any Moving Out motivation if you don't play the game for long time.

Signed it! Come on Nintendo!

Does the save file at least save in the game cart if gotten physical? Or is it just in the switch

Also signed petition

@DarkLloyd I don’t think you GET what Animal Crossing is about ..... for the sole reason you want to “beat” the game.

Animal Crossing isn’t a game you can “beat”

@BenAV I agree.... I have so many hours logged there and a good amount on LGPE... just let us have cloud saves all games!

The fact that local save backup via an SD card or flash drive still isn't supported is sad.

@GrailUK Don't you know? The first thought that should go through your mind when you buy any console is what if it dies? Closely followed by what if the servers go down? Never think about enjoying any games on it ever.

@Anti-Matter it just sounds a little unhealthy to obsess over it, I guess.

A big part of the charm for me is that I am just part of the community, not its god.

If I ever feel like I need to constantly fight against the core mechanics of a game to enjoy it, I think it means I don't really enjoy it.

@Browny it doesn't have to be like traditional cloud backups, they could put a limitation to it, say being allowed to download once every month, just something that would allow players to restore their data in case something happened to their Switch.

@GrailUK cloud saves are the only way Nintendo offers game data backup on the Switch.

@pensenaute If it was an Xbox 360, I would share your concern lol. But there are hardly any moving parts in a Switch. If something happens to it, it's more than likely due to haplessness. So I just simply don't see the cause for alarm. Especially if addressing it means compromising the game's structure.

This seems to be a hot topic since the Switch came out, but it's nothing new for Nintendo at all. They've long since blocked / given developers the option to block copying saves.

Two examples that immediately spring to mind are F-Zero GX and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on GameCube, both of which have saves files that cannot be copied onto another memory card. And, whilst I can't name titles of the top of my head, I've come across the same limitation trying to backup certain Wii saves to SD card. It seems to be a case of the internet only latching onto the practice recently though. Makes me wonder if all of these people going on about how important backups supposedly are to them ever actually tried backing up their save data in the past, or if they're just jumping on the latest bandwagon of internet rage...

That being said, I suppose more games with trading and online components these days means that the practice of locking saves is perhaps more prevalent on the Switch than Nintendo's past systems? I can't say as I'd really know as I don't play online games and the single player experiences I tend to go for probably don't tend to fall fowl of the issue...

@Dodger
You’re not wrong to argue for back ups, but I still maintain it goes against the very idea of the series to always have a back up to essentially undo things. Honestly I’d only be on board with it if use of a back up was limited to something like once monthly, and it took into account that you hadn’t played since that back up and therefore potentially missed out on villagers coming or going.

Penalize using a back up in some way, because like life doesn’t exist in a bubble, AC shouldn’t either. That’s the whole idea of the series.

@personauser93
Nah, they can. I admit to being obsessive about every little thing in my own town. But if you can’t accept that sometimes life throws you curveballs and adapt to them, you’re in for a rough existence.

@StableInvadeel
Oh, btw....
I have 3 copies of ACNL in physical (2 = ACNL, 1 = Welcome Amiibo version)
And All of my copies filled with my desired animal villagers.
I have tried Soft Reset Trick to get specific villagers by randomly despite i have to spent ton of hours just only to get specific animal villagers and which animal villagers i want to kick out.
Since i have two 3DS XL USA, i can ask the Move Out villagers from other of my copy to Move In on my main town. I also have the digital download version as Villagers Cycling town. Once all desired villagers move in on my desired town, i deleted the town from digital download version and start over again to regenerate another desired villagers i want to move in next. Sounds very cunning, isn't it ? 😉
Once i got all my desired villagers, i will keep them forever and will not allow them to Move Out. They are mine.

No, I don't put a lot of faith in Change.org petitions, but I did sign it! Anything we can do to let Nintendo know we want those cloud saves, do it. Remember, they changed their minds about online multiplayer with friends in Super Mario Maker 2.

probably not, nintendo made it clear that petitions dont affect their overall plans. but man does this games need cloudsaves, id wish theyd found a work around like every other company does already

I really don’t get the arguments against supporting cloud saves. It’s not like AC is some sort of competitive game you can “win” or “beat” people at. So what if someone tries to undo something they didn’t like? How does it affect you?

The arrival of the Lite will mean more people will own multiple Switch systems and want to play their games on both. Nintendo should be making this easier, not harder.

While I agree that all game should be backed up if you have an online subscription, petitions never work, so this is a waste of time.

@BenAV Catch 22 situation really

@Ralizah If they did allow cloud saves on games like Splatoon 2 you could easily cheese the system if you had multiple consoles. If you get demoted from Rank X to S, and you happen to have a cloud save prior to the demotion you could restore that rank without playing on the other console. Allowing cloud saves could also complicate the back-end of some games.

While Cloud Saves would be great to have, they do pose some challenges that are quite tricky to get around unless you limit other things in the game

First off, the reason why they're tricky is the ability to load to an earlier point in time opens the door for item duplication (a door that has been closed by the persistent saving feature of the new game, so presumably they want to keep it that way). With no restrictions, it'd be as easy as trading an item to a friend, then loading a cloud save where you still had that item.

So how do you prevent item duplication AND have cloud saves? Even as an experience Data Engineer and one who's also dabbled quite a bit in video game modding and design, it's a difficult question to answer. Here are a few ideas I've came up, of varying complexity, that'd solve the issue:

Only online trading:
By far the easiest way to fix it would be to implement a transactional trade system (open trade window, you both offer items/money up, hit accept, hit confirm, items received). If players have to be online to exchange items, and they need to conduct a trade, it can be designed such that a cloud save for both players is recorded just before the trade goes through, preventing players from loading a save before the trade. If internet connection is lost or a system is turned off before the trade completes, it is canceled.

This alongside removing the ability to pick up items from another player's town (can't just drop a leaf or bell bag and have another player pick it up unless they're a villager in that town), would be a rock solid method, however players lose the ability to exchange things unless they purchase online and are connected to the internet (no offline trading).

They could still allow you to visit another player's town locally, but you'd only be able to do things like gather fruit/weeds, plant stuff, pick their plants, catch fish and bugs, talk to villagers, etc. No trading, just playing together.

All Items and Bells are not saved:
If cloud saves don't record any of the items in your house, inventory, town, or any of your bells in your inventory or bank, you couldn't possibly dupe items using cloud saves.

You would lose a lot in the event you NEED to load one, but you'd also at least have a large amount of what makes your town unique, such as:
Designs, Paths, Town layout, villagers, friendship, your house, anything untradeable(bugs, fish, golden tools?), buildings, museum progress, collection log, mileage unlocks, recipe unlocks, catalog, etc.

While both work, option 2 is:

• easy to implement (just take a normal save, remove info about items in players houses, inventory, in the town, bank account, letters, mail currently in transit, etc, then upload it)
• doesn't require making players go through a paywall to trade
• completely prevents item duping with no loopholes as long as they don't overlook any item storage methods
• still retains a vast majority of data so if someone loses their save, they can get most of what they've worked for back

@BenAV Anything with trading poses a challenge for item duping. However there are ways to get around it as I discuss here https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalCrossing/comments/csi0y6/why_cloud_saves_are_challenging_and_how_to_fix_it/

@GrailUK I understand your point but being a portable device the Switch is more susceptible to being broken, lost or stolen. I also know it can mess with the game's mechanics but as @xmrmeow commented above, there are a couple of ways to deter cheaters and have cloud saves.

@pensenaute I can 100% say cloud saves have zero bearing on a games mechanics (unless it does it on the fly and stutters or something akin to loading sections of open world)