With a warning.
On March 3rd 2023, both Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon for the Wii U went offline for “emergency maintenance” and haven’t been working since. They were, along with a number of other Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and even Switch games affected by a security vulnerability – which was promptly fixed on Switch and 3DS titles. For Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon however, Nintendo just turned off the online modes.
From tomorrow, they’ll both be back. While Nintendo did apologise (and the number of people playing these games must be quite small now), they did deliver a warning.
Basically if something was to happen again that made “online difficulty to continue”, Nintendo will simply terminate online play on these games.
So if you really want to play Mario Kart 8 or Splatoon online, better get in there before someone messes it up for everyone.
Service resumes from August 3rd, 2023.
It's Black, Back Again.