Animal Crossing won’t take away your DLC items if you ditch Switch Online

By Giovanni Colantonio October 15, 2021

Nintendo has clarified some details about the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise DLC and how it interacts with Nintendo Online memberships. In a statement sent to Digital Trends, Nintendo of America confirms that players will be able to keep items they earned through the DLC, even if they cancel their Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. However, they will not be able to play the DLC once they unsubscribe from the service.

According to Nintendo, players will need an active Expansion Pack membership to play the DLC. The archipelago will become inactive if players unsubscribe and do not own a copy of the DLC. Nintendo confirms that save data will still remain stored on the console. So if a player unsubscribes, they will not lose their save data and will be able to resume where they left off if they buy the DLC or resubscribe.

The most important detail is that items earned through the mode will still be usable in New Horizons even without a membership. “Players can keep all items they’ve acquired using the DLC during their membership to use on the main island,” Nintendo of America says in a statement sent to Digital Trends. “Players can also still continue to access certain things they have unlocked in Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise on their main island, including adding counters and partition walls, as well as adding ambient lighting and soundscapes, even if their access to Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise is suspended.”

That answer is a relief, as players were immediately worried that items gained through the mode would become inaccessible if they unsubscribed. In reality, all items will remain — it’s just the archipelago that becomes inaccessible.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise launches on November 5. It will cost $25 or be available through a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership for no extra charge.

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Giovanni Colantonio

Section Editor, Gaming

Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…

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On May 26, Nintendo announced that it was adding Congo's Caper, Rival Turf!, and Pinball to the NES/SNES library on Nintendo Switch Online. The fan reaction was similar to the response after every one of these announcements: Overwhelming negativity.
On Twitter, most of the reactions to this announcement are complaining about this new lineup of games, begging for Super Mario RPG and other missing classic titles to be added, and claiming that Nintendo is lazy and not trying with these new additions. When classic titles like Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars don't come to the service in the update, any additions are immediately derided. While there are certainly areas of Nintendo's approach to Nintendo Switch Online worth criticizing, this backlash raises an important question: Do people really want classic games preserved or just the ones they've heard of?
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Nowadays in gaming discourse, players are quick to judge and immensely deride something if they're displeased with one aspect of it. We've routinely seen that with Switch Online updates, but the knee-jerk reactions overlook some of the critical preservation the service is doing.
Pinball, for example, might seem like an outdated game at this point, but it was the first commercially released game from the partnership between Kirby developer HAL Laboratory and Nintendo. Its release helped cement HAL Laboratory's relationship with Nintendo and former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's reputation.
"Looking back, the games that we developed in those days all involved big software ideas where the client was quite sure how to pull it off," Iwata recalled about Pinball's development and the early days of the Nintendo partnership in a writing featured in the Ask Iwata book. "Once we made something of a name for ourselves, we were lauded for our technical abilities, which led to a steady stream of work." In an interview with Used Game Magazine, Iwata would even state that HAL used the NES Pinball game's engine for the popular Pokemon Pinball games.
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Pinball, Congo's Caper, and Rival Turf! might not be all-time classics, but they're enjoyable games that deserve to be preserved and remembered just as much as Super Mario World or The Legend of Zelda. While Pinball and Rival Turf! were featured on previous iterations of Virtual Console, it's also worth noting that Congo's Caper has never been re-released before now. The same goes for other previously derided Nintendo Switch Online additions like The Immortal, Fire 'n Ice, Jelly Boy, Claymates, Bombuzal, and Nightshade.
As fans get angry at Nintendo for not featuring more notable games in these Nintendo Switch Online updates, the good that comes with preserving some of these NES and SNES games is often completely ignored. The reality is that it's already put most of the most important NES and SNES games on this subscription service, especially the former. It's inevitable that Nintendo would spotlight some of these lesser-known games on the service now that just a few stragglers remain.
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While some of the discourse surrounding additions to Nintendo Switch Online is misguided, Nintendo is not free from blame. I've complained about issues with its subscription service and its library in the past, and see how its current approach to re-releasing classics is flawed in the wake of the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U's Virtual Console. NES and SNES library updates aren't on a consistent schedule, so it's frustrating when a new batch of games is small and made up of obscure titles. Meanwhile, some of the subscription's games have notable technical issues that need to be resolved post-release.