Nintendo is slowly but surely ending online support for their multiplayer games on older consoles. Recently, the online multiplayer infrastructure of Splatoon was affected. But one last unyielding player remains online and keeps the servers alive.
What is Splatoon? Splatoon is a third-person shooter from Nintendo for its own platforms like the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. You control so-called Inklings and Octolings, shooting ink instead of bullets.
The game features a single-player campaign, as well as a local co-op and online multiplayer mode. In the standard online mode, your goal is to color as much of the battlefield as possible with your team’s color. The team with the most colored area ultimately wins.
Here you can watch the trailer for the latest game in the series:
Which servers have been shut down? The first Splatoon was released in 2015 for the Wii U. Splatoon 2 followed in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch, and you can currently play Splatoon 3.
Nintendo is currently ending online multiplayer support for all games on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. About two days ago, the publisher shut down the servers for the original Splatoon for Wii U. As a result, the online multiplayer of the game should no longer be playable.
The Last Unyielding Octoling Keeps the Servers Alive
How can the player still be online? X.com user Lcd101 claims to still be playing the supposedly discontinued online multiplayer of Splatoon: On April 9 at shortly before 3 a.m. German time, he played one last match.
However, Lcd101 did not go offline, but remained in the lobby – apparently hoping to find more players, even though the servers should already be down.
Since then, the player has been regularly updating his current status on X.com. As of around 8 a.m. on April 10, 2024, he is still live:
What is the secret? The player himself doesn’t seem to know exactly why he is still online. While he found matches in the first hours after the server shutdown, it has become quite quiet for him since then.
However, Lcd101 is not playing on a Wii U as might be expected, but is playing Splatoon via an emulator on a Steam Deck. According to a post, he has always wanted to play the original game on the go, which is why he transferred all his Wii U data to the Steam Deck.
In fact, it seems that some players are able to continue playing their games on the official servers as long as they don’t go offline after the shutdown. However, there are also various emulator and mod combinations for Wii U games that offer alternatives to playing on Nintendo servers.
However, it is likely that Lcd101 is still actually online via the Nintendo servers, even though they have officially been shut down. External servers are presumably still populated by several simultaneous players, while it has become very quiet on Nintendo’s side – after all, Lcd101 can no longer find any teammates.
Nintendo is one of the game publishers that absolutely dislikes seeing their games played in ways not intended by them. Recently, the company even sued an emulator for Switch games.
