What's the difference of leaving by airport or the "minus" button?

[Jhine7]

When people are selling their turnips online, I always see their rule stating "leave by airport only". What is the reason behind this, what's the difference?

 

[Jam86]

leaving with the minus can corrupt the save data

 

[kyrynbunni]

The minus button is really glitchy right now. It was found that it has a chance of corrupting the save data but more-so, it usually crashes the server. So when someone is selling turnips and someone uses the - button which brings down the town's dodo code then it just creates a big fiasco that could be avoided by leaving via airport.

 

[purple_vixen]

And - even when it works as expected - it teleports everyone left to the airport, which is a pain when you were in the middle of something elsewhere.

 

[Briar]

I believe if you leave by the minus button and people are in menus then a countdown will start. If people don't close the menus before the countdown ends then you'll leave quietly, which will put everyone back at the airport and revert the game back to the last save. I've seen people leave by the minus button when they were the only other person on my island though and and it was fine since neither of us were in menus.

 

[Scrub Kid]

I read somewhere using the minus button doesn't save the game for anyone so it's a higher risk of losing items etc. But take that with a grain of salt

 

[5cm/s]

ideally, using the - allows you to leave faster, but it can also make people lose recent work. basically, if you leave using the airport, if someone else is talking w someone or has their phone open, preventing you from leaving, you have to wait for all characters to not be busy to leave. if you use the - button, there is a timeout feature, which is like a 10 second countdown. if you try to leave with - and someone is in a dialogue/menu/ect you will get interference and a timer. If you run out that timer you will leave quietly and people on the island lose progress. this is when the whole "___ has left quietly" message comes up.

basically! leaving with minus is fine, but the problem comes when there are other people on the island and you get the timer and run out the 10 seconds.

hope that makes sense ;;

 

[Dormire]

Leaving via minus button (DURING IN A MULTI-SESSION OF MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE) will kick off every single person on the host's island. It can lead to progress loss because you forcibly left the island, in very certain conditions, it CAN lead to data corruption.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1251948018976215040

If you leave on your own if you're the only visitor will not cause any harm to the save data. (I think Nintendo overlooked this issue.)

 

[Meira]

I've used the minus button many times, haven't faced any issues yet in terms of data corruption, but I do know that if someone is in a convo, a timer will tick down and if they don't get out of it, it will roll all the players back to the last autosave whereas leaving by the airport is safer. When I am on someone's island, whom I don't know, I will leave through the airport. Sometimes I will use the minus button if I'm at friend's place and know that there are not many people who are there.

I'm trying to make it a habit to leave through the airport whenever I can because who wants to be interrupted when you are in the fitting room at Ables haha

 

[daisyy]

thanks for asking this question, i've been interested in the answer as well! i'm too scared to even risk it and have ended up leaving by airport every time.

 

[Krissi2197]

It also screws it up if a NPC (for example Celeste) is fenced in. It makes them teleport out of the fenced in area.

It also causes villagers to stop crafting if nobody is in their house.