Animal Crossing player in tears as she loses 500-hour island

An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player was in tears after she lost her 500-hour island.

Released in March 2020 for the Nintendo Switch, Animal Crossing: New Horizons not only became a favourite with veteran fans of the series but also new fans too, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons quite literally allowed players to escape to a fantasy island, build their ideal home and share that experience with friends and family online. Animal Crossing: New Horizons unsurprisingly went on to be the best-selling game in the entire franchise.

So as you can imagine, many players have put in a lot of hours into the game since its launch in 2020 and if years of progress would be lost, it would surely devastate the affected player. Sadly, as reported by Dexerto, one such player is TikTok user, Jessica.

Jessica uploaded a video to TikTok in absolute floods of tears, explaining that after stepping away from the game for a while, an update was required for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Thinking nothing of it, and I’m sure most of us would be the same, she downloaded the update to find that all her progress has been lost.

Jessica contacted Nintendo customer service to explain what had happened on the assumption that the data would be backed up, after all, cloud saves are part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service. Unfortunately, Jessica was told that her data could not be retrieved as it was not backed up to the cloud correctly.

As you can imagine, Jessica was distraught. To be fair, I think we can all relate on some level. I’m sure we’ve all lost save data at some point in our lives and when we lose hours upon hours of progress, it can totally kill all enthusiasm to ever play that game again.

Thankfully, while Jessica was unable to retrieve her Animal Crossing: New Horizons data, she was encouraged to begin anew by the wonderful community.

Jessica thanked the community for all the support in a recent TikTok video. I think we can say that Jessica has ventured into a new horizon (sorry, not sorry). Hopefully she is having a blast borrowing money from the infamous loan shark, Tom Crook, sorry, Tom Nook.

In related news, a gamer has warned that one day, Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be unplayable for us all! Though we’re sure, Jessica should have plenty of time to create epic new islands before that time arrives.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for the Nintendo Switch.