Back in March 2023, Nintendo took down the online servers for the Wii U versions of Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 due to a security vulnerability that could allow hackers to take control of players’ consoles remotely.

After this extensive downtime, Nintendo has announced they will be resuming online play for both games on August 3rd 2023. According to their report, the security vulnerability has now been fixed, and players should be able to continue playing without putting their consoles at risk from hackers. Nevertheless, Nintendo has also stated that they may discontinue the service entirely should more issues arise in the future.

Wii U Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 – Notice regarding the ending of the current maintenance

In March 2023, Nintendo paused network services for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 to address a vulnerability related to online play. The issue has now been fixed, and so we will resume online play for these games based on the schedule below. Please accept our sincere apologies for the extended waiting period.

• 3 August 2023 Resume service
  • * To resume online play, downloading a new update will be necessary for each title per the release timing noted above.

If further issues occur which make it difficult to continue supporting online play, we may have to discontinue the online play service for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 at short notice. Should this occur, please note that offline play would continue to function normally.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Nevertheless, with the Switch well into its life cycle and a potential new console over the horizon, its possible that the Wii U servers may not be supported for that much longer, even if no further issues arise. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.