In an interview published in the french outlet Gamekult, the Director and Producer of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Aya Kyogoku and Hisashi Nogami, revealed that the new game wouldn’t feature the option of cloud saves, which had been introduced in combination with the paid Nintendo Switch Online membership. This is unlike most other Switch titles. Since then, several outlets have translated said article and quote the reason for this decision being that the team behind the game are hoping to “avoid manipulating time”, as that is “one of the founding principles of the game.”

Animal Crossing is a franchise known and beloved by its fans for its wholesome gameplay and long-term playability. Since its first iteration on the Nintendo GameCube, the game has only been released once for each new console, with the gap between titles widening. Many players spend hundreds - often up to thousands of hours - on one of these games, building up their fictional towns and developing friendships with its inhabitants.

This is why we would like Nintendo to reconsider the decision to disable cloud saves and therefore withhold the only option for players to backup their game saves.

Aside from the risk of losing a portable console like the Switch or having it be stolen or broken, there have been instances where even players only keeping their system at home lost all their save data - namely many cases in 2018 where non-Nintendo made Switch chargers could completely destroy the system because of incompatibility. With that one problem now being known, there is no guarantee that the Switch is safe from any save-file damaging issues for the remainder of its lifetime.

Seeing this, and considering how many hours players are likely to invest into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we see it necessary that users should have access to Nintendo’s cloud save functionality or be given another option to backup their game saves. This could be realized by allowing players to download their backup data in a limited manner: be it by implementing time intervals and therefore limiting the amount of downloads of the player’s data per year, or setting a waiting period before the latest save can be downloaded. There are also alternative options Nintendo could explore, like allowing users to create backups on their own storage media.

All in all, we believe that, when considering the amount of time many players devote to games in this franchise, the fact that Animal Crossing is a real-time game (e.g. losing a year’s worth of game progression would need another whole year to regain it) and under the prospect of new issues appearing regarding the Switch’s data storage, there should be at least some way to ensure that players will be able to recover their save data in case of any mishaps.

Source of the interview: https://www.gamekult.com/jeux/animal-crossing-switch-3050879505/test.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1560582448

日本人: 任天堂への請願をサインしてください。「あつまれ　どうぶつの森」のセーブデータのバックアップに対応してください
Español: Por favor, firma esta petición para que Nintendo permita realizar respaldos de Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
German: Bitte unterzeichnet unsere Petition um Nintendo dazu zu bringen, Spielstand-backups für Animal Crossing: New Horizons zuzulassen.
Français: Signez cette pétition pour demander à Nintendo de prévoir une solution de sauvegarde pour Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Italiano: Firma questa petizione per chiedere a Nintendo di aggiungere l'opzione "Cloud dei dati di salvataggio" su Animal Crossing: New Horizons.