Nintendo has announced that the Wii U network servers for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon will be restored on August 3 after being offline since March. Both games were taken offline earlier this year following an apparent security vulnerability, which allowed hackers to take control of other users’ Wii U consoles.
“The issue has now been fixed, and so we will resume online play for these games,” Nintendo said. This is the first time the company has publicly acknowledged the issue, following months of silence since both games were taken offline.
Wii U players will need to download a new update for each game to resume online play. However, Nintendo also noted that it may need to discontinue online functionality across these titles once again if these issues persist. Should this occur, Nintendo assures that offline play will remain unaffected across each game.
While Nintendo didn’t outright confirm the nature of the security breach, dataminer OatmealDome discovered that Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 each had vulnerabilities that were potentially dangerous to players. The netcode vulnerability, which the dataminer called “ENLBufferPwn,” apparently allowed hackers to take over a player’s console after connecting with them through online play.
Keep in mind that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, and Splatoon 3 on Nintendo Switch are not impacted by this security vulnerability.
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