Nintendo Support: Announcement of Discontinuation of Online Services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software
en-americas-support.nintendo.com

Archive link: https://archive.ph/aWo6a

In early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end for Nintendo 3DS* and Wii U software. This also includes online co-operative play, internet rankings, and data distribution.

We will announce a specific end date and time at a later date.

Please note that if an event occurs that would make it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software, we may have to discontinue services earlier than planned.

  • This includes software exclusive to New Nintendo 3DS
  •  TwilightVulpine   ( @TwilightVulpine@kbin.social ) 
    17·
    2 years ago

    This question, I can’t deal with it. It just kills a bit more of hope for the future that people are thinking like this.

    First of all it’s trivial to copy and distribute digital media. There’s no great obstacle that impedes players to run games effectively indefinitely, it’s a matter of unwillingness. The game is not ephemeral, company support is ephemeral.

    Don’t you like the games that you play today? Do you really think nobody will want to play them in the future?

    There are people running Quake 3 Arena servers still today. That’s a game from 1999. That’s not even bringing up how people figured out how to run even older couch multiplayer games online.

    Can you imagine if that was said out of any other medium? “Why not just acknowledge that books are ephemeral?” That would be an outrageous notion and it would be regarded as a massive failure of society towards culture. Yet we have a whole new medium that would be trivial to preserve if not for deliberate obstacles put in the way, and there are people treating it as a lost cause. It boggles my mind!

    •  Kayn   ( @HKayn@dormi.zone ) English
      2·
      2 years ago

      If you think it’s not a lost cause, then tell us what we can do!

      How do we convince politicians to turn this into a law? The same politicians that don’t understand technology and still think that FPS games breed terrorists. Once it’s a law, how do we make sure it’s enforced worldwide?

      Do not lump me in with the consumers that created this future. I am already preserving what I can. I am the weird kid in the corner who advocates for DRM-free games on GOG and gets called crazy for having a 16TB hard drive full of offline backup installers. I legally back up what I can, and obtain what I can’t. I play Warframe and other live service games knowing well that they’ll be gone one day, unless someone manages to hack together a private server. I can’t help but still enjoy some of them.

      Being a hoarder and advocating for game preservation in front of average Joes is thankless and exhausting. I can’t help but stare reality in the face. You seem to know the situation a lot better than me, so tell me, what else should I be doing?