Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s item duping glitch patched out

Well, that didn’t take long. A few days after the internet discovered an exploit in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that allowed everyone to clone items, Nintendo has now gotten rid of the economy-busting glitch.

The maintenance patch went out for Animal Crossing in late March, and while it’s a small one, it has big implications. According to the Japanese Nintendo support page chronicling patch notes — which we’ve translated via Google — the 1.1.1 update “fixed a serious bug affecting game balance.”

That description is ambiguous, but data miners say the “serious bug” refers to the item duping glitch in particular. Popular videos showcasing the glitch also appear to have been taken down from YouTube.

The change makes sense. Previously, you could replicate an item simply by rotating it, so long as you had a second player to simultaneously put the item in their pocket. It was a simple exploit that allowed players to earn extra bells with little effort.

While this might be a bummer for some folks, it also speaks to Nintendo’s new-found responsiveness. This hopefully a sign that the latest Animal Crossing will be well-supported with patches and updates. And besides: You can still break the economy by hunting down tarantulas en-masse!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

• $60

Prices taken at time of publishing.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is “a much-needed escape from everything,” according to our review.

• $60 at Amazon