Picture this: after months of work building up a beautiful island paradise, your community's resident representative vanishes. Their house is left vacant. No one's building infrastructure anymore. You and your neighbors are left to fend for yourselves.
Then, suddenly, one evening, their lights turn on! Your friend and neighbor is home again! You rush over to greet them, knock on their door and are welcomed inside, only to find....ugh! The home of your town's resident representative is full of roaches.
Hahaha villagers get scared and leave if you have roaches lol!!! #2.0update #AnimalCrossing #ACNH #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/U8RTmtxb6p
— Blue Hall (@Radical_Replays) November 4, 2021
That's the scene that greeted lots of players returning from long hiatuses to Animal Crossing upon its latest 2.0 update which, among many other cool new features, allows other villagers to visit your house while you're inside it.
You can't really fend them off from doing this; if you're inside long enough, they'll just knock and let themselves in. Honestly, it's a pretty cute interaction, as under normal circumstances they'll compliment your furniture and offer you a gift as thanks for letting them visit.
But an unfortunate combination of circumstances has resulted in a lot of these visits being truncated by the presence of gross bugs. You see, a lot of people were caught by surprise as the 2.0 update was released two days early, dropping unexpectedly last night. As many players hadn't picked up the game in months, when they first signed in, their home was infested with roaches. Normally, that's not a problem, as you can run from room to room and squash them to have your house roach-free within a few minutes.
I forgot about random villager visits and my roach scared Tia away...#AnimalCrossing #ACNH pic.twitter.com/az1stJXzJU
— doom desire (@doom_mori) November 4, 2021
However, with the new update, a lot of players are having villagers drop by within seconds of entering their houses to de-roach them, before they can get rid of all the bugs. Many might not even be expecting the visitors, either, as it's a new feature and it stands to reason that not everyone looked at every detail of what the new update included.
Tex just CALLED me out, holy moly... #ACNH pic.twitter.com/LuxNIzn93v
— Animal Crossing World 🐦☕ (@ACWorldBlog) November 4, 2021
Anyway, turns out that no one is happy about encountering a roach. If you really want to avoid this interaction, your best bet is to clean house before downloading the new update. But if you've already downloaded it, you'll just have to rush in there and stomp those roaches as fast as possible before anyone sees what an absolute travesty your house is.
The Animal Crossing 2.0 update is massive, so if you need help with everything there is to do, we have guides on how to download the update in the first place, how to unlock Brewster and The Roost, and plenty more in our comprehensive Wiki guide.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.