Nintendo Fans Unleash Animal Crossing Turnip Jokes After GameStop Stocks Explode

Nintendo fans are having a blast joking about how Animal Crossing helped a group of investors cause havoc in the stock market. Gamestop's share prices are though the roof as one group of investors hatched an idea to save the retailer. A hedge fund had been plotting on the demise of the company, but they never expected a group of retail investors to thwart them. Now, gamers all over are laughing at what a mess has been made for some of Wall Street's wealthiest traders. Animal Crossing has had Turnip trading for a little while now, and there was a massive rush to understand it when the game launched in the spring of last year. The fluctuating prices and understanding how to get in and out of the market was an easy way to make a killing in the game. Some believe that cutting their teeth on Daisy Mae's turnip exchange could have led to what we're seeing today.

Wall Street: How could they possibly manipulate the stock market system???
Everyone who played Animal Crossing during quarantine: pic.twitter.com/z8v8AZRLBL

— Julie Eyer (@in_the_eyer) January 27, 2021

On Reddit, hopefulls are constantly trying to game the Stalk Market. One intrepid software engineer that helps run Turnip Traders, a site that functions like eBay, told Inverse how the entire thing was created to solve a problem. Devon Bernard knew that there was an interest in this stuff and capitalized.

"My girlfriend is a big Animal Crossing fan. She was trying to use subreddits for trading, but it was really inefficient," he explained. "[So I] brainstormed some ways to make it more effective, [like] allowing hosts to update listings, make lines, only share code when up-next/invited, allow people to join lines without tracking extra codes, prevent bots with CAPTCHA."

"The response has been crazy awesome," he said. "As soon as we posted it, [so] many people [were] trading and reporting it [worked] much smoother than anything else they've tried. We've been flooded with feature requests, but are working nearly round the clock to complete them."