Petition For Nintendo To Introduce Cloud Saving For New Horizons

It’s only been 9 days since Nintendo revealed an official trailer and game play footage for the newest mainline Animal Crossing game at E3, and fans have already started a petition to get Nintendo to change their minds on an issue that has players very concerned.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the latest mainline game in the Animal Crossing series since New Leaf

The producer for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Higashi Nogami, released in an interview with French site Gamekult that New Horizons would not be compatible with the cloud saving service that comes with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

We translated that article from French to English; it’s linked here, and contains loads of new information about the game including amiibo compatibility, K.K Slider music, and more.

“New Horizons will not be compatible with cloud backups to avoid manipulating time, which remains one of the founding concepts of the series.”

Apparent concerns over players’ use of manipulating saves to cheat has lead to the developers deciding to not offer the cloud saving service. The Nintendo Switch console saves data to the console itself, so if something happened to your Switch- if it was lost, stolen, or damaged beyond repair- that would mean that your Animal Crossing: New Horizons data could be lost forever.

Cloud saving is a feature provided by the Nintendo Switch Online service, however Nintendo announced they planned to not offer cloud backup to New Horizons players

The option to backup data to Nintendo’s cloud would give players the security of knowing that if something terrible were to happen to their Switch, they would still be able to salvage their data. Having put literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours into past Animal Crossing games and feeling the pain of losing a town due to data corruption, I understand that players are anxious with the possibility of losing their islands. As such, a petition has been launched on Change.org to ask Nintendo to change their stance on allowing players to backup their save data.

At the time of writing, the petition already has had 241 people sign it. Hopefully with enough signatures, Nintendo will see that players do want the option to backup their files without using cloud saves for cheating.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!