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What word/phrase best describes Tom Nook’s loan program?

This is a goofy question, but...

For those of you who don’t know, Tom Nook is a character in the Animal Crossing video game series. In addition to serving as the primary shopkeep in most of the games, he sees to it that you, the player, have a roof over your head. Your first house (tent) purchase from him is non-optional, and in older versions of the game, house upgrades are *also* non-optional (leading to fan jokes about extortion), but the most recent game changes the latter limitation, allowing you to pay off your first house and keep your loan balance at zero indefinitely.


However, one thing that has never changed across the games is the nature of these loans...namely, that you don’t actually have to pay them back. Tom Nook will ask you to do so repeatedly, but he makes no effort to reclaim the house or anything, and you can go the entire game living out of a tent and fishing for sport if you want. The only downside is that you *will* be stuck in that tent; Nook doesn’t do any upgrades until the old debt is gone. It kinda reminds me of the “casual loans” exchanged between friends and family, where one person gives another some cash with the expectation of repayment, but doesn’t really go after the other person if they don’t pay it back...they just remind the recipient about it over and over again, and won’t lend to them a second time if the reminders are ignored (ex: “No I’m not giving you a couple hundred; you still haven’t paid me back the money I gave you last month, you jerk!”).


Problem is, “casual loan” is just a phrase I made up; I have no idea what that’s actually called, and I have no idea what Nook’s hilariously generous method of debt management is called either. Is there an official term that describes this kind of arrangement? Because I know it’s not a gift, since ignoring the debt does have *some* negative effect (can’t upgrade your house). In other words, what do you call it when a person doesn’t necessarily have to repay a loan, but their lack of repayment still affects their future lending potential?
gpt
I think it be considered as non-profit fully subsidized loan. When you buy a house in ANCH, there's no interest rate but the incentive to why you want to pay is due to that you might wanna built a better house. And it's not time lapsed as well as you can pay whenever you want. Not paying or paying won't hurt anything you do in your island life. Also when you pay, Tom Nook will donate the bells to the charity which is considered to be non-profit by institution standards. 



This reminds me a lot of Subsidized student loans. The government pays for any accruing interest in your loan so you have no interest rate while in school. Not paying or paying won't hurt anything within time frame while still in college but sometimes you wanna pay because it lessens loans later on when you graduate which is a good thing. The difference is that Tom Nook's loan program has no time frame at all while Subsidized student loans only have unlimited non-accruing situation within college time.