Why Animal Crossing fans fear ‘the void’

While Animal Crossing may have hit the mainstream in 2020, the franchise and its community have a much longer history, over the years developing customs, etiquette, and entire concepts which may not be known to the average player. For instance: “the void,” a place where unwanted villagers go and an idea which every Animal Crossing: New Horizons player should be aware of lest they inadvertently mess up their friends’ villages.

It’s hard to pin down when, exactly, the “void” term popped up within the fandom, or who coined it. It seems likely that the idea developed on the Bell Tree Forums, one of the oldest and most hardcore Animal Crossing communities. Technically, the mechanic has existed across all Animal Crossing games, though we can see discussion of the void on forums as early as 2013.

The scary-sounding term refers to something peculiar that happens when a villager moves out of your town. If that villager isn’t picked up by someone else on move-out day, it may or may not move into “the void,” a Schrödinger-esque online space where the character still exists even if it is technically not living anywhere at that moment in time. It’s hard to say where, exactly, this information lives, whether that’s the wider Animal Crossing servers, or if it’s retained by your game and the circle of friends who have interacted with you.

Once in the void, there’s a chance that villager might show up in a friend’s village, assuming that they have an empty lot and did not manage to fill it before the game took care of it. It’s a central mechanic, really, and one that adds complexity to the villagers. They’ll still remember where they came from.

Here’s the problem, though: New Horizons makes it easier than ever to get rid of “ugly” or “undesirable” villagers through mechanics like amiibo and Mystery Islands. At any given moment, the average player’s void is likely filled with villagers that their friends won’t actually want. Hell, it’s already happened at Polygon.

One of my starting villagers, Samson the jock mouse, got booted off my island early on. Weeks later, my colleague Nicole Carpenter informed me, with some horror, that the pipsqueak had appeared on her island. I hadn’t even thought about Samson in ages, but there he was again, making someone extremely unhappy.

“I was shocked when I saw him, but even more shocked that he was an outcast from your island,” Nicole says. “I was (and still am) in the middle of an island renovation, but I will not make the same mistake again. When Samson gets booted, I am going to immediately find a new villager.”

The whole “void” concept has given rise to a specific etiquette within the veteran community: If you have a villager that’s moving out, try your best to make sure he or she gets adopted by someone who wants him. You can do this through a variety of communities and marketplaces, whether that’s social media, Discord, or Nookazon. Even infamous villagers have their fans, believe it or not, and it’s better that packed-up characters go to someone who will appreciate them than to have them go somewhere where they will be hated. So if you can, tell people that you have a villager that’s up-for-grabs, and failing that, warn your friends that they may be saddled with a character they don’t want if they’re not careful.

Here is where I’d like to note that while Nicole has given me plenty of grief over Samson, in an exclusive interview with Polygon, she told me that she didn’t find a parent for her moved-out villagers, so really, nobody is blameless here. BUT ANYWAY.

Specifics regarding the nitty gritty of how this mechanic works are somewhat unclear. Fuchsiarascal, a long-standing member of the Animal Crossing community, who at one point even ran a “voided villager pick-up service,” tells Polygon that “this topic is one that tends to get rumors established as fact without doing significant testing on it.” Myths include the idea that you can somehow “clear” your void, but there’s no actual proof that this is possible. And to be sure, not everyone hates getting a voided villager, because it means that you get a chance to pick up a character beyond the small move-out window.

But regardless, you should make sure your villagers get adopted even if you hate them — your friends will thank you in the long run.

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