If Nintendo announcing the discontinuation of the eShop for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U wasn't bad enough, strap yourselves in. Around 10:00pm CST, with no prior announcement, both the DSi Shop and Wii Shop Channels were quietly pulled offline, leaving previously downloaded purchases and titles unable to be redownloaded, showing error codes 290502 and 209601 for both systems respectively. Nintendo's CDN, which is the download server that houses all of the update and shop data, remains to be active with the ability to download titles with tools such as NUSDownloader, showing that only the frontend of the stores have suddenly disappeared. Nintendo's status page still lists that everything is operational, though it's currently unknown if this was a mistake like last year's eShop incident, or if this really is the end of an era.

Source

[6-7-2022 Update]
Both shops are back online. See this post for more information.

 

[Deleted member 323844]

I have backed up the most complete title keys database content, just in case. But even the most complete one lacks many games, especially from the JPN store.

I wonder how complete is hShop, the 3DS preservation project. There are raw numbers, but without knowing how big is the 3DS eShop, who knows.

I guess all Wii/DSi content has been preserved.

 

[Alexander1970]

Thank you Nintendo,you are as kind as everytime.

Time to visit the great Guys from the MarioCube Repository.

 

[peteruk]

It's not like Nintendo do something so underhand or anti consumer

 

[Deleted member 587857]

-

 

[MaxiBash]

This strikes me as unintended.

I'm getting that feeling as well, and I've seen people call into Nintendo tech support asking what happened, and the answers lie in between "we'll contact you with a supervisor", "this has to do with the whole of the eShop right now" and "there's been several outages and we are not planning on closing the shop this early", though nothing has been 100% confirmed yet.

 

[DinohScene]

RIP.
16 years of uptime is more then the original Xbox has gotten.

 

[djpannda]

:: Pats another 4tb drive:::: you'll never leave me old friend

 

[spotanjo3]

Not surprised. That's why I only purchased the physical version. And no online at all either.

Nintendo Switch Online will be next when Nintendo Switch is no longer on the sale in the future. It will become useless and you can't play Nintendo Switch Online games anymore. That's why I am not buying it at all. I will stick with Emulators only on PC/MAC/Android. .

 

[64bitmodels]

i'd be sad, but i'm a dolphin user so uhh..
packwatch rip bozo
rest in piss you wont be missed (you actually will because i loved the experience of browsing the shop ;-; )

 

[s1nharvest]

Nintendo's response to steam deck emulation videos?

 

[the_randomizer]

Be a shame if people pirate those games, what are they gonna do, pull the storefronts offline? Oh wait.

 

[such]

Well, this would've been a huge pr snafu, if it wasn't so Nintendo.

But yeah, this just sounds like a tanuki chewed through some cables.

 

[MohammedQ8]

I don't know why people are sad. It is like you moved to new apartment and you are paying for the old and new apartments every month.

You don't even have friends to visit you nor have affair with you.

 

[eyeliner]

Well, if the stores are deaded, the the running of backups becomes legit.

 

[Natsukashii]

I don't know why people are sad. It is like you moved to new apartment and you are paying for the old and new apartments every month.

You don't even have friends to visit you nor have affair with you.

ok but no, they don't maintain as much server when they are not used as much, they obviously did get ride of most servers and nintendo isn't a broke ass company they absolutely can maintain few servers to maintain olds eshop, or you know, do like microsoft and make retro compatibility a possibility, it would be even easier than microsoft since 3DS was compatible with DS games when mcirosoft had to work to get 360/og xbox games on xbox one/series.
Oh but wait they are planning to kill 3DS eshop too...

 

[Natsukashii]

Well, if the stores are deaded, the the running of backups becomes legit.

it isn't legally but honestly in my ethics it is and I don't care downloading them. I bet there is a torrent of all ds games released somewhere

 

[Cris1997XX]

Oh, a new article about Nintendo doing something! I wonder how the haters are gonna react! Wait a minute...

 

[The Catboy]

I kind hope this is just a mistake and the Big N isn’t that cruel, but they have been getting worse over the years. Let’s hope everything has been backed up and won’t be lost due to the Big N!

 

[LoggerMan]

The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.