Most Animal Crossing: New Horizons players may be focused on the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas events, but Nintendo has also recently issued a new set of guidelines specifically for businesses and organizations that may wish to use the game.
These new guidelines already have content creators feeling nervous, as they seem to prohibit them from earning any kind of advertising revenue from videos of the game. What’s more, Nintendo appears to want to also ban politics from Animal Crossing: New Horizons completely.
In the section that reasonably requests that content which could be considered offensive not be created in-game, Nintendo writes “Please also refrain from bringing politics into the Game.”
Though no reason has been provided as to why Nintendo now wants this, New Horizons has become involved with world politics a couple of times in the past. In the run-up to the US Presidential election, candidate Joe Biden created his own Animal Crossing island that players could visit, which promoted his campaign and provided information on voting.
And before that, protestors in Hong Kong who campaigned against a controversial bill used the game to stage protests and spread awareness. Neither of these instances seemed to elicit a response from Nintendo at the time, but now the company says that it will take action if it catches anyone not following these guidelines, including prohibiting people from even playing the game.
It has been pointed out that Nintendo’s request for no politics is rather vague and undefined, as Nintendo doesn’t clarify what it considers to be politics. Biden’s island is reportedly still active and can be visited, but would it need to be deleted? If so, is this something Nintendo can actually enforce? Would anything related to social causes, like the Hong Kong protests or anything involving Black Lives Matter, be labelled as politics? Considering the rule seems to only apply to businesses and organizations, does that mean individual players don’t need to abide by it?
At this point, it’s very unclear as to how this will affect Animal Crossing: New Horizons and players. At the very least, things we can draw from the guidelines are that businesses and such can’t make money off the game or use it to promote anything that may be considered offensive, which should hopefully include any hateful ideologies.
In related news, New Horizons has received two nominations for the upcoming Game Awards, with one of them being Game of the Year. It’s going up against some tough competition, including The Last of Us Part 2 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for Nintendo Switch.
Source: Nintendo
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