Nintendo temporarily closed online services for Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon on Wii U in March of this year, to address vulnerabilities. After a long few months of silence, Nintendo are happy to confirm that services will resume from tomorrow, August 3rd.

A rare win for Wii U! The official statement from Nintendo can be found below.

In March 2023, Nintendo paused network services for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 to address a vulnerability related to online play. The issue has now been fixed, and so we will resume online play for these games based on the schedule below. Please accept our sincere apologies for the extended waiting period.

• 3 August 2023 Resume service
  • * To resume online play, downloading a new update will be necessary for each title per the release timing noted above.

If further issues occur which make it difficult to continue supporting online play, we may have to discontinue the online play service for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 at short notice. Should this occur, please note that offline play would continue to function normally.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.