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
There really should be a law requiring companies which provide online services to be required to release self-hosted server software once they discontinue the provision of the service.
IMO we shouldn’t force companies to keep their servers online forever.
That’s not what the person you’re replying to suggested though. They suggested that companies should release self-hostable server software when they discontinue providing the service themselves. In the age of containerized software this wouldn’t even be all that difficult in many cases
They don’t have to be. 30 year old PC games have their server software bundled with the game; the ephemeral aspect of current online services is entirely artificial.
And it’s incentivized by the people buying into it. If people collectively woke up and started asking questions, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Instead, we buy into them and then try to force them to open up through legislation.
Why not just turn to services that actually value preservation, instead of sticking with those that don’t?
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!
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?
I’m differentiating between products like Pokemon and services like Nintendo running servers that let you trade Pokemon.
Both should ideally be preserved of course, but today’s reality is that it’s much less feasible with the aforementioned services.
How can we change that?
Pokemon Bank will still continue to work, but who knows how long that will last.
It’s devastating news for Pokemon fans looking to legitimately collect every Pokemon. You essentially need online functionality to obtain every Vivillon form in X/Y. Lack of Friend Safaris is also a devastating blow to anyone trying to complete the Pokedex without importing Pokemon from other games. I
'm going to miss Wonder Trading. That’s how Gen 6 became my most played generation.
I think we all knew this was coming when Nintendo discontinued being able to purchase 3DS and Wii U games on the eShop, but it is still very sad to hear.
Many 3DS and Wii U games have been ported to the Switch over the years, but there will be several games that will likely never get ported because they were incremental series games. Why would they port Super Smash Bros Wii U when they already released Super Smash Bros Ultimate?
A lot of people will probably not care much being on the newest console, with the newest games, but it is truly sad to know that you will never be able to revisit these games again in a few years when you’re feeling nostalgic, or if you just like the old version better.
I can only hope that homebrewers figure out how to spoof their own servers to keep online functionally for these old games.
Guess it’s a matter of time before someone creates a mod for the systems to enable online play again
Is this the kind of thing that RiiConnect24 was for? (just for the original Wii) Or are these online services unrelated
Found it already… https://pretendo.network
Online services for 3DS and Wii U
Will this effect something like usbloader?
