Nintendo is taking Mario Kart 8 & Splatoon offline

Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon are two of Nintendo WiiU’s most successful titles. Due to a security flaw, multiplayer services are now temporarily disabled. The vulnerability ensures that hackers can take over foreign consoles.

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Anyone who owned a previous Switch WiiU and wanted to use Mario Kart 8 or Splatoon’s online features in the past few days had nothing but an error message to see. Network functionality is temporarily unavailable due to Urgent Maintenance. It is unclear how long the servers will remain unavailable. Of course, titles can still be played in single player or local multiplayer mode.

Hackers can take over consoles

Developer OatmealDome wrote on Twitter that the shutdown is related to a vulnerability called “ENLBufferPwn”. The vulnerability allows an attacker to hijack the consoles of fellow players on an online tour and execute arbitrary code on the device. In addition to many games on the Switch, WiiU titles and Mario Kart 7 for Nintendo 3DS should also be affected. However, patches have already been released for the Switch and 3DS. The Japanese publisher could be working on an update for the WiiU right now.

Since the Switch games were updated some time ago, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 3 have not been affected by maintenance. Anyone who owns a WiiU should consider switching to a Switch anyway. After March 27, there will be no option to purchase games for the older home console through the Nintendo eShop. Purchased titles can initially be downloaded and used indefinitely.

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