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Animal Crossing’s camera glitch is patched back in — as a feature

Players and content creators are ecstatic

An Animal Crossing character waves outside of her house Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
Nicole Carpenter is a senior reporter specializing in investigative features about labor issues in the game industry, as well as the business and culture of games.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons second summer update was released on Wednesday night, bringing new seasonal items and fireworks to the game. Another long-awaited feature, the ability to backup save data in case of an emergency, was added, too. But that’s not all: Players that booted up the game were surprised and excited to find that Nintendo added back in a feature that was once patched out.

In early July, Nintendo patched out a glitch that let players turn off the New Horizons HUD while using the camera app in-game. Players were upset: The feature was widely used by content creators and others to take professional, clear video — something necessary in creating realistic Animal Crossing genre trailers. However, now, the glitch is a feature.

“A new feature was added to the NookPhone Camera app, allowing you to turn off the guide information by pressing in the R Stick,” Nintendo wrote in its patch notes. Two new in-game popups are now available as a reminder, one of which notes that players “cannot turn the guide off when using the solo horizontal grip on a Joy-Con controller.”

You can see it in action below:

Players are excited to see the feature back in New Horizons — there is justice for user-created videos once more. For some, it’s given players hope that other quality-of-life changes, like item stacking, will eventually be patched into the game.