RIP Star fragment (and other) trees

[Barney]

Oh he really boils my blood. Such a hateful and rude man. I can understand why people were upset because of him. I had no idea he was reporting people for the egg trees though?

I watched one of his Youtube videos after reading all this just to see what all the fuss was about.

In the bit I saw, he couldn't find a star tree, but said something along the lines of: 'ah well, I'll report them anyway - they probably had something hacked on their island at some point'.

Surely Nintendo will ban accounts who submit frivolous reports like that?

 

[peachycrossing9]

I watched one of his Youtube videos after reading all this just to see what all the fuss was about.

In the bit I saw, he couldn't find a star tree, but said something along the lines of: 'ah well, I'll report them anyway - they probably had something hacked on their island at some point'.

Surely Nintendo will ban accounts who submit frivolous reports like that?

I know. You would think Nintendo would do something about people like him. Oh well, just have to be careful with releasing dream addresses I guess. But at least the star frag tree issue is solved.

 

[Skandranon]

I watched one of his Youtube videos after reading all this just to see what all the fuss was about.

In the bit I saw, he couldn't find a star tree, but said something along the lines of: 'ah well, I'll report them anyway - they probably had something hacked on their island at some point'.

Surely Nintendo will ban accounts who submit frivolous reports like that?

what was his reasoning that they were a hacker? or does he just report every island he visits?

 

[Barney]

what was his reasoning that they were a hacker? or does he just report every island he visits?

I didn't watch more than a couple of minutes, but it seemed to be that lots of people had shared the dream code with him due to the island having star trees.

So despite him looking all over and not finding any, he just reported the island anyway.

As I said, surely this is the exact kind of abuse of the system that Nintendo needs to shut down?

Post automatically merged: Aug 7, 2020

I just went back to find the video I watched - he starts on this island around the 40 min mark, finds nothing wrong, but then reports it anyway around 43:50.

 

[Marte]

Yeah it's a shame that they got rid of it, they were really pretty. So I get why people are bummed, me included. But when I see people making petitions for getting them back I just get like.. bro. This ain't really the time to get mad and sign petitions about some digital trees, considering whats going on in the world right now. (I swear tho, animal crossing is one of the only good things that 2020 gave us, ahahah. What even is this year?)

 

[Chris]

been thinking about this, and I wonder if people don't have themselves to blame for this. star trees have been in the game for months now, Nintendo definitely knew about them. and I know very little about game development, but from what I know patching star trees wasn't that difficult (please correct me if I'm wrong!). they probably could've patched this a while ago. why didn't they?

I wonder if Nintendo wasn't trying to look the other way? but with dream addresses being shared and more and more people posting pics of their star trees, they couldn't ignore it anymore. so they ultimately decided to patch it.

this is just speculation. I'm not trying to say this is what definitively happened, it's just a possibility. I do think people who hack or own hacked items need to be wiser and not broadcast their activities to the world. a lot of people were using these trees without really understanding what they were doing, and now they're mad that Nintendo patched them out without realizing that Nintendo owns the code and other people aren't allowed to mess with it. idk. I wish people would take this as a learning lesson; if you're gonna violate a company's ToS, you need to be sneaky about it, not brag about it on Twitter.

edit: also people saying "they fixed this, why don't they fix [extremely hard thing to fix] and [thing that doesn't need to be "fixed" because it's part of the developer's vision]" are out of their minds lol

I think it's more likely that it just wasn't high on their priority list until they started receiving a wave of Dream Suite reports related to islands with hacked trees.

 

[Skandranon]

obviously doesn't know what a karen is, considering he is a classic karen.

 

[naranjita]

I think it's more likely that it just wasn't high on their priority list until they started receiving a wave of Dream Suite reports related to islands with hacked trees.

yes, reporting star trees is lame and the kind of thing a high school bully seeking a quick power trip would do, but it is completely idiotic to exploit a developer's code and then brag about it in social media. no developer wants people to know that there's weakness in their code (note that Nintendo doesn't acknowledge that these trees were hacked-- the patch notes refers to it as an "issue", just like they refer to the actual glitches they've been patching out, even though this isn't a glitch or a bug at all). if people wanted the star trees, they should've kept quiet about it, and Nintendo would've let it slip by. but of course, if a star tree shines in the forest and no one posts it on Instagram, does it really exist?

obviously doesn't know what a karen is, considering he is a classic karen.

men are the biggest "karens" of them all and we still refer to the phenomenon with a female name. lol.

 

[Watchingthetreetops]

hang on what are star trees? I haven't heard of this D:

damn these kids and their hacks

 

[Manah]

hang on what are star trees? I haven't heard of this D:

Bell trees that were modified to have star fragments on them instead of money bags. I think there were other items too, but stars were the most popular by far.

 

[ripley4O77]

I would love it if Nintendo made this a legit feature, but then, they’ve never really been ones to listen to their fans...

Smash Bros would like a word with you.

 

[SpaceTokki77]

I watched one of his Youtube videos after reading all this just to see what all the fuss was about.

In the bit I saw, he couldn't find a star tree, but said something along the lines of: 'ah well, I'll report them anyway - they probably had something hacked on their island at some point'.

Surely Nintendo will ban accounts who submit frivolous reports like that?

I would hope. You can usually add a picture when reporting, and if Nintendo doesn't see the trees/hacked item he was reporting, they'll probably ignore the report.

 

[Sheep Villager]

I do feel it was only a matter of time until they patched the star trees out.

I'm surprised how heated of a topic some simple trees have become in the AC community. Personally I never had any nor did I want any as I don't wish to have hacked stuff. However in my opinion the star trees were relatively harmless. Even if they were against TOS I wouldn't go about reporting dreams with them. It's none of my business if someone has a pretty tree on their island. It's not harming me in any way, shape or form.

That said the part about star trees I do stand against was the selling of them for real life money. I suspect Nintendo may have been influenced to patch them out just due to this. They did release a statement a while back saying they do not condone selling of AC content for money. It's far easier to just remove the merchandise than to try to moderate ebay, amazon and etsy.

On a final note I see a lot of people here mentioning.. how shall I put this... the guy with a V starting name who makes videos. I would highly recommend everyone does not watch his "hack crusade" videos as that is only giving him views, relevancy and monetization. I've known about this particular guy due to the pokemon community and he flourishes off of being given attention. He's picked several big fights with content creators and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Remember: Even negative attention is still attention.

It will also eventually aspire copy-cats if he starts getting recommended via youtube algorithms. Ignore him and move on.​

 

[Nefarious]

what was his reasoning that they were a hacker? or does he just report every island he visits?

He’s always been the type to complain about every little thing, calling false fouls, and just being a general ass to everyone. He was notorious in the Pokemon community, to the point that everyone started ignoring him. This is just how he’s trying to stay relevant after all these years, jumping onto a new ship to cause problems. He’s definitely a hypocrite in this drama as his island flag is a sexually inappropriate picture of Isabelle. Everyone really shouldn’t be giving him the credit for this, he just wants the attention.

 

[Manah]

He’s definitely a hypocrite in this drama as his island flag is a sexually inappropriate picture of Isabelle.

Which... would be a perfectly legitimate, non-harrassment reason to report him.

Anyway, yeah, negative attention is also attention.

 

[Nefarious]

Which... would be a perfectly legitimate, non-harrassment reason to report him.

Anyway, yeah, negative attention is also attention.

Unfortunately no one has been able to find a dream address or way to report him in game to make Nintendo aware of him abusing the system. Harassing/bullying is definitely against Nintendo's ToS as well. Just a matter of sending them a report.

 

[rubyrubert]

Really hoping they add the trees in as a Celeste recipe or something. Maybe they can add UFO Gulliver in and have him give you star trees (but the stars can't be harvested)? I know Nintendo doesn't really listen to fans that much, but they did add the camera feature. ACNH is the 2nd best-selling Switch game. Adding cool items like the trees or Pocket Camp-esc items would keep the hype alive.

Verify may be incredibly pathetic for doing after hacked trees, but I doubt Nintendo is going to do anything to him for using the report button like they intended for it to be used. At this point, the Twitter outrage towards him and his followers just gave him more power, attention, and money from views. The good news is that he can go back to being an irrelevant PokeTuber.

Don't crucify me for saying this, but if you had star trees, you should have expected them to be patched out or for you not to be able to use the Dream Suite. It sucks, but that was the disclaimer around buying trees for months.

At least now, we don't have to worry about DA bans or reports. Have horror islands been taken down that didn't have hacked items?

 

[Ren185]

I didn't watch more than a couple of minutes, but it seemed to be that lots of people had shared the dream code with him due to the island having star trees.

So despite him looking all over and not finding any, he just reported the island anyway.

As I said, surely this is the exact kind of abuse of the system that Nintendo needs to shut down?

Post automatically merged: Aug 7, 2020

I just went back to find the video I watched - he starts on this island around the 40 min mark, finds nothing wrong, but then reports it anyway around 43:50.

wow even acnh has its share of karens..or darens in this case

Post automatically merged: Aug 7, 2020

I hear even horror themed islands are being mass reported and banned. if thats true then its destroying the enjoyment of playing ac. i see why most people would rather just not share their dream codes

 

[mitfy]

rip... it's to be expected, though. hacked islands have always made me feel :/ bc even though they're very pretty, it makes me feel bad about my own island. still, that's just a personal thing and i would have liked to see a star fragment tree in person (or dream, rather) before this.
like others have said though, ppl who hack their towns know the risk they're taking. nintendo removing it isn't a personal attack, either. however people reporting DAs en masse just bc the town's hacked was unnecessary.

 

[thedragmeme]

The sellers were doing something wrong for sure, but the only reason they were able to do so was because there was demand for it. If people weren't so desperate for star trees and actually followed tos, then that wouldn't have been a problem. The sellers aren't the problem here, they were just trying to make a buck. The buyers were the real problem, after all, its their choice on how they spend their money

I'm very aware of supply and demand, however, there isn't demand if there is absolutely no supply. It takes two to tango, unfortunately.