After releasing more than a decade ago in both cases, it’s truly about to become the end of an era for Nintendo fans and video game owners.
The final hours have arrived to play and access the online features for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS along with basically every other game on the Nintendo systems while a group of gamers are making a legal push to try and prevent service shutdowns in the future.
As was announced last Fall, Nintendo is pulling the plug on all internet-based in-game features across their last generation hardware including most if not all third-party titles as well.
With the shutdown time now officially scheduled for 4 p.m. PDT / 7 p.m. EDT on Monday, April 8, players have less than two days to play online, gather replays, download player data, view rankings, and pretty much anything else you can’t do offline.
The biggest hit in the fighting game space is against Smash 4 on both Wii U and 3DS, since those titles sold a combined 15 million copies worldwide, though other impacted fighters include Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Pokkén Tournament, Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition, Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden, One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum, Injustice: Gods Among us and more — though some may be unavailable already.
Nintendo already shuttered the eShop on Wii U and 3DS last March as well, but for the foreseeable future, users will still be able to download content they own as well as software updates.
To help send off the game, Liquid|Hungrybox held one final Coinbox online tournament for Smash 4 earlier this week where a bunch of the biggest names in the scene signed up to compete.
The top 8 matches can be found on the HungryboxUltimate channel on YouTube while the whole event is in the archive on Hbox’s Twitch page.
More details can be found on Nintendo’s support page.
While this is all about to go down, Freeman’s Mind creator and Accursed Farms YouTuber Ross Scott is leading the charge to try and prevent large shutdowns from happening to games in the future.
The Stop Killing Games movement seeks to make a legal push to have governments around the world officially recognize video games as goods instead of services, so that way publishers theoretically could not render a title unplayable when official support stops like just happened with Ubisoft’s The Crew.
This push seems to be aiming at countries with strong consumer protections like France (where Ubisoft is also headquartered) with game owners pointed towards signing petitions and making official complaints to official regulator’s like France’s DGCCRF (even if you don’t live in the country for The Crew).
If you’ve purchased a game at all in like the last 15+ years, however, you may already know that titles are sold as “services” which could be revoked or ended at basically any time for a wide array of reasons publishers deem fit.
Challenging this status quo in front of a court or judge could set a new legal precedent that most games are indeed goods and not services and deserving of more protections as such.
Though no government petitions have been officially approved and open for signing yet, Ross is optimistic that the French government will examine this practice with potential further action in Germany, Australia and beyond according to PC Gamer.
His solution of course isn’t to make publishers keep servers maintained indefinitely, but to make sure they offer buyers a way to at least play offline or run their own private servers once games are no longer being officially supported.
This wouldn’t necessarily have helped Smash 4 and most other Wii U games since they can still be played offline, but it could prevent larger shutdowns that are inevitably going to come in the future, especially as more titles grow more dependent on online connectivity.
You can find more information on how to get involved yourself on the Stop Killing Games website as well as Ross’ new video detailing the campaign on YouTube.