View Comments
Nintendo’s “Animal Crossing” recently cut interest rates at its in-game bank called the Bank of Nook, which might have been done to curb a hacking practice, the Financial Times reports.
What’s going on:
- Players received a letter from the Bank of Nook that explained a change to interest rates, which dropped to 0.05% from 0.5%, according to Kotaku.
- According to Axios, players of “Animal Crossing” could once deposit large amounts of the game’s currency — called bells — into their savings account. Players could then hack the game’s internal clock to jump to a future point where their bells would gather interest over time from the bank. Suddenly, these players would have more money than before without much time passing.
- But, according to the Financial Times, the game has cut interest rates. Sources suggested to the Financial Times that this was being done to stop this practice.
- Per Financial Times: “People familiar with the situation said the Bank of Nook rate cut was an attempt to curb that practice. Nintendo has made no official comment on the matter.”
- Gamers can now only win money on the “stalk” market.
What this means:
- Per Markets Insider: “The update was likely made to spur in-game spending and deter users from using a time-travel exploit to speed up interest payments.
- The game is reflecting real life as “central banks ease lending conditions to combat the coronavirus and its economic fallout” around the world, according to Markets Insider.