You know how humans will sometimes say “Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news”? And you know how that clues you in on there being good news as well as bad news so that you wait until you have the whole picture before you start rending garments and gnashing teeth and shaking your fist at the skies? Well, that’s not how Nintendo handles emails about ceasing support for its freemium mobile game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
No.
Instead, in amongst your inbox’s LinkedIn spam, the verification requests from that one persistent person attempting to hack your travel site account, and the messages from a Google alert regarding Casualty and Holby City actors appearing in pantomime this Christmas in the UK, you find an email titled “Notice of end of service for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp”.
Immediately, you put down your shopping basket, forgetting all about the excitement of finding exotic beverages like “Grape Fanta” and “Raspberry Ripple Irn-Bru” in the local convenience store. After all, everything will taste like ASHES and MISERY in the aftermath of this email. Why bother with anything? Refreshment is for people who still have joy in their lives and pockets. Fizz and high fructose corn syrup are the domain of those who can still look forward to annoying a grumpy octopus called Octavian as part of a years-long grudge over a Valentine’s Day card.
Zoe tries out Animal Crossing for the first time, under the guidance of Ian.Watch on YouTube
“Thank you for playing,” says the email. You look around the convenience store, hoping that a fellow shopper feels the full force of your incredulity at this sentiment and meets your wild gaze. You do not simply “play” Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. What a ridiculous way of describing it. You LIVE Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. You set phone alarms for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. You spend real human money in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. During darker times you unfriended real human friends for not understanding the in-game etiquette of which insects to share depending on the flowers you grew during old gardening events in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
“We are writing to let you know that the service for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on smart devices will end on November 28th, 2024 at 15:00 (UK time),” continues the email. You cannot understand it. You are still playing! The people you’re in an eternal daily gift-giving ritual struggle with are still playing! In fact, come to think of it, you’re still PAYING.
WOE AND HEARTBREAK.(An ongoing delight is repurposing items to create murder scenes.) | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
Surely that £2.99 you kick in every month is keeping the lights on over at Nintendo? And what did they do with the other payments? You can’t quite bring yourself to work out exactly how much you’ve paid in over the years, but you’re pretty sure that, in Vegas gambling terminology, you would be considered a “whale” and would receive a constant stream of free drinks and sandwiches while at the tables in recognition of your largesse.
“In-game events and item distribution will continue until the service ends. We would like to thank everyone who has supported the game since it launched,” concludes the opening paragraph. Your roiling emotions are soothed slightly by this recognition of your efforts. “Yes,” you think. “I have been most supportive. I’m glad they see that, even if they are not providing a constant stream of free drinks and sandwiches in recognition of my largesse.”
You hit a new subheading and your eyes narrow: “Regarding the sale of Leaf Tickets”. You are very familiar with Leaf Tickets. In fact, you are still smarting from an email exchange from about four years ago when Nintendo withdrew software support for the Android phone you were using and your subsequent switch to an Apple device meant the Leaf Tickets premium currency you’d accrued on your Android account were now locked away in that ecosystem and would not be transferred.
Image 1: No-one truly appreciates the effort I put into my market box layouts. Image 2: This item set helped me recreate a scene from a Midsomer Murders episode. Image 3: FAILURE. Image 4: I have a plush whale shark in real life too! She’s called Polly. | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
“The sale of in-game Leaf Tickets will cease shortly before the end of service on November 27th, 2024 at 06:00 (UK time). Please use any remaining Leaf Tickets before the end of service.” You are now furious. Nintendo, as well as blundering into your inbox with a devastating announcement, has also put a timer on accessing and spending those mystical Android account-bound Leaf Tickets.
Over the years, you have forgotten how many Leaf Tickets are actually tied up in this way. Instead, you have allowed your simmering rage at incompatible proprietary payment ecosystems to act as a force multiplier to whatever the number really was. By this point you’re pretty sure Nintendo are withholding thousands – no, MILLIONS of Leaf Tickets from you. Three months to figure out how to access an Android account and spend a BILLION Leaf Tickets? You boggle at the sheer impossibility of it all.
The email just keeps going.
“Regarding the end of the Pocket Camp Club monthly subscription plan,” it says.
A new wave of grief hits you. This is probably nothing to do with a subheading about the end of a monthly subscription plan. In fact, now you come to think about it, the subheading is grammatically incorrect, what with there being three distinct monthly subscription plans. You know this because you have personal experience with two of them, and are disdainful of the third because you will never understand the appeal of digital stickers. Digital fortune cookies, yes. Digital stickers? No. You have standards.
“Subscriptions to the Pocket Camp Club will no longer be possible as of October 28th, 2024 at 01:00 (UK time). After this date, users will be unable to create new subscriptions, and existing subscriptions will not automatically renew.”
You remember how existing subscriptions absolutely renewed when you forgot to cancel the Android version for a little while after swapping to Apple and conclude sourly that this probably added at least a trillion more Leaf Tickets to the forbidden Android stash.
“Users with paid subscriptions to any of the plans” – AHA, you think. So they’re admitting there are multiple plans now!
“– Merry Memories Plan, Happy Helper Plan, or Furniture & Fashion Plan – that extend beyond October 28th, 2024 will continue to receive the benefits of their relevant plan until the service ends on November 28th, 2024 (excluding the Pocket Camp Club Journal and benefits distributed monthly including Leaf Tickets and Fortune Cookies).” You can’t remember if you care about the Journal. That might be one of the digital sticker-adjacent things which makes you feel exhausted and old.
Image 1: My dirty little Leaf Ticket habit. Image 2: Look. I only rejoined for research for this piece, okay! | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
“Please note: users with a free trial of the Happy Helper Plan do not qualify for this extension of benefits,” says the email. You have never felt less like a Happy Helper in your entire life. You are a subscriber to the Mournful Moper Plan, the Woebegone Weeper Plan, the Nintendo Is Killing The Friends Who Live In My Pocket Plan.
You begin to plan a digital funeral for the animals who reside at your campsite. You know that this is a completely reasonable response because you are a reasonable person and your actions will therefore reflect your innate reasonableness. You surface from your grief long enough to congratulate yourself on this logic and are immediately assailed by memories of the time you unfriended someone over the fact they gifted you some common ladybirds instead of rare ladybirds. Also, the time you were going to uninstall the game over the fact that three of the jellyfish tanks in the game have angular corners instead of rounded edges and are thus completely unsuitable for jellyfish habitation. And how you said “Mayor of Animal Crossing” when someone asked about your five-year career plan.
I will not be revealing how much I spent on getting this item. | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
“Regarding the future of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp,” reads the final subheading. To you, this feels like rubbing salt into the wound. Surely the whole point of the email is that there is no future for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. The email is literally titled “Notice of end of service for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.” You almost rage-quit the email in disgust. Surely there is LinkedIn spam that needs your attention? Or maybe you can get tickets to one of those pantomimes your Google alerts are banging on about. After all, you will need something in your diary to look forward to in the terrible, bleak post-Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp world.
“We are currently developing a paid version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for smart devices to release in the future,” says the email.
What?
WHAT?
W H A T ?
“This version of the game,” WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT???????
“Will not require a constant connection to the internet”
WHAT?
“Will not contain any in-app purchases”
WHAT?
“Will allow existing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp users to transfer their save data over by linking their Nintendo Account (please note: due to the paid version not supporting in-app purchases, this transfer will not include any unused Leaf Tickets).”
Image 1: Looking at these adorable doofuses in AR mode is a total delight. Image 2: Sometimes I make more of an effort with my layouts. Sometimes there are just hedges in the water. Image 3: Good job, Fang! | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
WHAT?????
“More information about this version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will be shared in October 2024.”
WHATTTTTTTTT?
You are now beside yourself with … grief? Happiness? Grappiness? You decide that grappiness is too complicated an emotion and opt for outrage instead. Why was this whole new version of the game buried at the end of the email? At the very least, why did Nintendo not say up front that there was good news as well as bad news? How can you be expected to read a whole email of dozens of words to get to this point? You were tricked into grieving! You’d started to think about maybe making up with Octavian now that he was facing impending doom! Although, now that you start to think about it, will the Octavian in this new version be the same Octavian as in this version? WHENCE AND WHITHER THE SOUL OF A DIGITAL OCTOPUS IN SAVE DATA TRANSFERS, NINTENDO?
“Thank you for your patience and understanding,” you are welcome. | Image credit: Nintendo / Eurogamer
“Thank you for your patience and understanding,” concludes the email. This is the height of presumption. You have been neither patient nor understanding and you intend to maintain that attitude until at least October 2024.
You close the email and take your basket of exotic sodas to the convenience store clerk. Spending small amounts of money on little treats will keep all of these emotionally confusing experiences at bay and is not at all how you ended up with a Leaf Ticket habit in the first place.
Half an hour later, it turns out that you do not like Grape Fanta or Raspberry Ripple Irn-Bru.
You decide not to learn or grow from this experience in any way. And by “you” I mean “I”. *I* decide not to learn or grow from this experience in any way.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
