Have you been spending all weekend meticulously weeding, picking fruit, and chopping wood to make money in Animal Crossing: New Horizons the way Tom Nook intended? If so, then you are a right and honorable villager. Unlike those people who have found a new glitch that lets you earn hundreds of thousands of bells in just minutes.
As laid out by GameXplain in a video over the weekend, New Horizons has a cloning glitch that allows you to duplicate any item that you can place on top of something. For example, you can clone the Switch Nintendo mails you as a present at the very beginning of the game. or the Royal Crown that’s occasionally for sale at the Able Sisters shop.
The glitch requires two players but is otherwise really easy to do. First you need to call a second player into your game. Then you need to put the object you want to duplicate on top of a cardboard box or some other piece of furniture that can hold items. Finally, just have the second player rotate the piece of furniture the object is on while you press Y to pick it up. If all goes well, you’ll have a duplicate of the item in your inbox while the original stays out. Now you have two. And then three. And then as many as you can hold. Each Switch goes for several thousand. The Royal Crowns go for significantly more. Before you know it you’ll be Scrooge McDucking through a vault of Bells.
If you’re feeling truly entrepreneurial, you don’t technically even need another human being to help you out. It only took me a few minutes to make a second character on my game, invite them to my island, and then control both characters using separate Joy-Con to pull off the glitch by myself.
Of course, the ethics of this rags-to-riches scheme are a whole other issue. Animal Crossing games are about taking your time, finding joy in the little things, and letting each new discovery be its own reward. Going from broke to Warren Buffet in an hour certainly runs counter to that whole “the friends we made along the way” vibe, but each player will have to do their own soul searching. Also, these are uncertain times and I got bills to pay.
Plus it’s possible Nintendo will patch out this exploit sooner than later and save us all from ourselves.