In August 2024, Nintendo’s free-to-play mobile incarnation of Animal Crossing was announced will come to an end in November. It’s now been revealed that its replacement, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete, will arrive on December 3 and drop all of the 2017 game’s microtransactions for a one-time fee. In addition to the huge sum, the game’s losing features, and there is no exception for long-time players in the original Pocket Camp.

Nintendo’s experiments with mobile games have often been at odds with the ethos the company usually tries to express. At one point the now defunct Mario Kart Tour had deeply controversial gacha mechanics. The company has also been quick to shut down games that don’t work as intended, much to the dismay of long-time gamers, with a slew of mobile titles — including Dragalia Lost and Dr. Mario World – canned since the mobile ventures began in 2016.

Pocket Camp’s situation is not quite as final as others Mario Kart Tour is no longer receiving updates since late 2023. Instead, people who have played the Animal Crossing game since its 2017 release will be able to transfer their progress to the new game. But only after paying a whopping $20 entry fee. And it will only be updated for one more year. And it loses functions. And my god, this doesn’t look good.

There’s something of a concession to how huge a price this is for a mobile game that people may have already spent huge sums on in the past – for the first two months, Nintendo will charge half as much, ending on January 31, 2025. Still, another $10 is a kick in the eye for those who have invested over the past seven years.

Pocket Camp Complete doesn’t mark a step forward for the game, but rather it will continue with a slightly reduced set of features and the promise of another year of updates. If you have an established village, everything will transfer, along with all your friendship levels, but not your leaf tickets, which are removed completely. But in a really surprising move, Nintendo clears it up on its update page that “There is no discount specifically for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp users.”

Why not?! What a deeply strange move, to not reward those who have subscribed for $3 to $8 a month since 2019, when subscriptions started! The game costs as much to me, who has never played, as it does to the person who has put in $480 in subscription fees.

Various online features disappear, such as sharing gifts and the Market Box, and interacting with other islands becomes a completely strange ordeal. Most of the bonuses that came with subscriptions also goes.

It also looks like Nintendo intends to stop updating the game frequently come October 2025, after which time there are no plans to add new cookies or new events, suggesting that the $20 entry fee gets you access to the last real year of the game. Who knows? This could be timed to overlap with the release of a new Animal Crossing game for Switch 2, given that the normal release schedule for the series suggests it should be in the works.

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