Online services for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon on Wii U are once again available

Nintendo has announced that after a prolonged maintenance hiatus, the online gaming capability for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon on the Wii U console will be restored.

Both games' online services were temporarily taken offline in March for emergency maintenance. However, at that time, there was little indication that the downtime would be prolonged. Now, after several months, both games are making a return to online service.

Nintendo posted the following message on its website: "In March 2023, Nintendo temporarily suspended network services for the Wii U titles Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 due to a vulnerability related to online gameplay. The issue has now been successfully addressed, and as a result, we will be resuming online play for these games according to the schedule provided below. We apologize sincerely for the extended period of inconvenience."

During this period, Nintendo dataminer OatmealDome tweeted that the identified security concern is highly likely linked to an exploit called ENLBufferPwn. This exploit enables an attacker to potentially gain control of an individual's console and execute code on it simply through online gameplay interactions.

In addition to Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon, several Switch games were also vulnerable to the exploit at one point. These included Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario Maker 3, Nintendo Switch Sports, Arms, and Splatoon 2.

While subsequent updates have successfully patched these games to protect players from the exploit, Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon on Wii U were not patched. Therefore, the reason for the extended "emergency maintenance" is believed to be focused on definitively resolving the vulnerability present in these two games.