The Splatoon 1 community is mourning the possible death of the game after Nintendo announced on Oct. 4 that it will kill the online services for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, which means the online servers will go down permanently in early April 2024.
The reason why Splatoon 1 fans are already lamenting the death of online play on Wii U is because the game’s ninth birthday is coming in May 2024 and they won’t have official servers to play their beloved game on. Some went as far as to say Nintendo should wait until 2025—the year Splatoon 1 would celebrate its 10-year anniversary—to pull the plug. But for now, Pokémon Bank will be the only title on the 3DS/Wii U with online service as of early April 2024.
On top of the anniversary aspect of Splatoon 1, the news that the Wii U’s service is shutting down also hit Splatoon 1 players hard because the servers stopped running for nearly five months in 2023 and only started working again in August. One particular player wondered why Nintendo bothered to fix the servers at all only to pull the plug the next year.
If Splatoon 1 players refuse to abandon the game and start playing Splatoon 3 on Nintendo Switch, all that will be left for them is to resort to a third-party service like Pretendo Network, an open-source alternative to Nintendo Network that builds custom servers for Wii U and 3DS games. One player already suggested that in one of the comments regarding the shutdown.
“Looks like we’re gonna need to install pretendo/wiimmfi equivalent if we wanna keep playing Splatoon 1 or lobby play, lets squad up for that,” the player wrote on Twitter. “Keep Splatoon 1 going by the community, that’s what the Mario Kart Wii community did.
Though the news is obviously heartbreaking for Splatoon 1 players, this was set to happen after Nintendo shut down the eShops for 3DS and Wii U in March. Thankfully, they’ll have six months to start organizing custom servers and be prepared for the death of the official servers.
