3DS/Wii U eShop Shutdown March 27 2023 - Online Services to go offline April 2024 (Bank Excluded)

[R_N]

The way the post-eShop "free trial" of Bank works, it's for a large number of days where only the last two digits of the day count are displayed in the app. Plotting out all the possible numbers that could come before those digits, and the days they would lead to, one of the most plausible possibilities pointed to an expiration date of December 31, 2027. However, subject to fuzzy interpretations about whether it's counting down to the start of the day or the end, another consistent possibility is to have the countdown end on December 31, 2050, which is noteworthy because that's the latest date that can be set in the user-configurable time settings on the 3DS. (Switch is more forward-looking and allows you to set dates as far forward as 2060, but these are both regressions from the original DS which went all the way up to 2099.)

If it's counting down to the 2027 date, I could seriously believe them intending to keep the service running that long and no further. We would also find out whether this is the case or not as of April 6, 2025, because on that date, a countdown to the end of 2027 would tick over from "?00 days" to "999 days". Meanwhile, if it's counting down to 2050, I wouldn't expect them to keep the servers running that long, and instead it should be thought of as a placeholder date until the plug suddenly gets pulled. My best estimate about when they would be likely to do so was probably around 2027 anyway, but maybe move it up a year in light of this latest announcement.

That's pretty interesting, basically a chance they just shoved it as far into the future as possible then. Since likely even they didn't fully know when everything gets pulled.

That said I could see 2027 anyway. By that point we're probably in the midst of:
-switch 2 being out
-pokemon mansion being out
-switch 1 in the process of sunsetting its online services, which would include Home probably going into the similar "no longer have to pay (because you can't)" set

So at that point Bank is ancient, on a system seeing no support and long since gone fully to the aftermarket, and no longer being held on as an incentive for the premium plan (because it no longer exists). About a good a time as any to just finally pull that plug.

(And also hopefully the Home sunsetting is less....janky. More planned ahead of time.)




Though, I guess worth noting: we'll still be able to redownload previously purchased stuff from the eshop until further notice. The Wii to my knowledge can also still redownload stuff.
Maybe the reason Bank (& Transporter) are still hanging on is because they get to hang with those servers? That could be nice and go with the "2050" theory.

 

[Kurona]

I think it's likely that they simply set a far-off date that allows them to be flexible with their plans, and they'll shut down Bank before that point. I doubt they'd have an exact date in mind years in advance.

 

[Altissimo]

Friend of mine made this, an overview of shiny entries that you can't get in Home after Bank goes offline (assuming they don't show up in a Switch game before that happens). Told him I'd post it here even though crobatfan11 HAS a Smogon account already lel

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Friend of mine made this, an overview of shiny entries that you can't get in Home after Bank goes offline (assuming they don't show up in a Switch game before that happens). Told him I'd post it here even though crobatfan11 HAS a Smogon account already lel

As someone who has a complete shiny dex for gens I-VII save those gaps, this was very much the content I needed and I thank you both hugely

 

[Coronis]

The news of this shutdown doesn’t really surprise me, but in a surprising sort of way I honestly don’t think it’s as big of a deal as we think it is. We happen to have access to live player data for custom/homebrew online servers for DS and Wii titles, and as far as I’m concerned, the only games that would have ever had a significant number of people all playing online at the same time were Mario Kart games. For the purpose of Pokémon games, your only reasons people would go back to those would be for that one thing where you can get old event Pokémon, or maybe if you’re doing something extremely specific like trying to get all of the Medals in B2W2.

The obvious counterargument here is that people might use these custom online servers more if the games themselves were still available. And normally I would say this is a very valid point… if we didn’t also have evidence to suggest consumers tend to not buy older games as much even when they are available. By and large, consumers tend to prefer newer content that they haven’t experienced before, and while there’s plenty of people out there who want to relive the glory days, you also have a silent majority that acknowledges quality of life changes absent from older titles.

I cried when someone stole my Wii with all my MKW times and custom tracks :(

Also all my fun Wii Sports records.

 

[crobatfan11]

As someone who has a complete shiny dex for gens I-VII save those gaps, this was very much the content I needed and I thank you both hugely

Nice, looks like its doing exactly what it was supposed to do. I was personally going for max possible shiny entries in Home myself entirely because I found out about the gen 7 QR codes and had a gen 4 shiny living dex, I had a feeling most people were unaware of the QR code thing.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Friend of mine made this, an overview of shiny entries that you can't get in Home after Bank goes offline (assuming they don't show up in a Switch game before that happens). Told him I'd post it here even though crobatfan11 HAS a Smogon account already lel

...oh. Apparently Eternal Flower Floette has been patched out of Home in a recent update? Most interesting.

Does that mean if you somehow managed to transfer it to Home it'd have just gotten deleted? I have one, of course, since I did my AZ Floette challenge ages ago, but it's not able to be transferred out of Bank.

 

[R_N]

...oh. Apparently Eternal Flower Floette has been patched out of Home in a recent update? Most interesting.

Does that mean if you somehow managed to transfer it to Home it'd have just gotten deleted? I have one, of course, since I did my AZ Floette challenge ages ago, but it's not able to be transferred out of Bank.

It wasn't a recent update to my knowledge, it was always just kind of passively removed.

iirc in Switch Home it was just full on removed from the start (no dex entries, no render, no cry) but in Mobile Home it was only partially removed (it still had the model but nothing else). The model might have gotten removed at one point, but it was probably a while ago.

Of course now it wound up getting a modern mini sprite when they added all of those a few updates ago, which is funny.


I don't think Home ever would have accepted it on transfer, even towards the start. I think you could doing some roundabout hacks to trick it into thinking one was the other, but it would cause issues.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

It wasn't a recent update to my knowledge, it was always just kind of passively removed.

iirc in Switch Home it was just full on removed from the start (no dex entries, no render, no cry) but in Mobile Home it was only partially removed (it still had the model but nothing else). The model might have gotten removed at one point, but it was probably a while ago.

Of course now it wound up getting a modern mini sprite when they added all of those a few updates ago, which is funny.


I don't think Home ever would have accepted it on transfer, even towards the start. I think you could doing some roundabout hacks to trick it into thinking one was the other, but it would cause issues.

Oh, I see. People were reporting it was there when Home first went live; there's a bunch of posts on various websites about it. I thought it initially had a dex entry, but I might be wrong. I've seen reports that some people have managed to transfer it ( https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/f2ww9h idk if that's via 3DS hacking or Switch hacking though.

Well, if it's gone all to the good as far as I'm concerned. I was genuinely convinced it'd be in the game files forever and every generation you'd have someone going "will they ever release it??"

 

[Esserise]

Well, if it's gone all to the good as far as I'm concerned. I was genuinely convinced it'd be in the game files forever and every generation you'd have someone going "will they ever release it??"

As much as I’d like to think this, I know it’s not really over until the Kalos revisits are in the rearview.

 

[crobatfan11]

It wasn't a recent update to my knowledge, it was always just kind of passively removed.

iirc in Switch Home it was just full on removed from the start (no dex entries, no render, no cry) but in Mobile Home it was only partially removed (it still had the model but nothing else). The model might have gotten removed at one point, but it was probably a while ago.

Of course now it wound up getting a modern mini sprite when they added all of those a few updates ago, which is funny.


I don't think Home ever would have accepted it on transfer, even towards the start. I think you could doing some roundabout hacks to trick it into thinking one was the other, but it would cause issues.

It was possible to transfer it in when Home was new, though even just having its Pokedex entry scanned from a QR code seemed to completely fuck with Pokedex flags, since it never had a dex entry of its own (On mobile home anyways, on switch it seemed to). I have almost every capped Pikachu registered as Shiny in home, and there is no other explaination, as I do not have them in Bank and have never hacked them in, nor transferred in from any Bank other than my own. The Pokedexes between my Switch and Mobile Home versions are not consistent with each other even to this day, some things were only registered on one of them, due to this discrepency. Shiny Hoenn Capped Pikachu is only registered on my Mobile Pokedex and not on Switch.

 

[Zowayix]

I think there is homebrew, or otherwised hacked, Home but there's certain things real Home does that the homebrew/hack can't so it still marks them as illegal iirc

Just pointing out that it's much worse than this - Home's servers keep track of a giant list of all Pokemon that have ever entered through Bank since day 1, and starting in v3.1.0 (Teal Mask compatibility) it's strictly enforced that all Pokemon entering Home with an USUM or earlier origin mark (or no origin mark) must exactly match this list, otherwise the deposit will be blocked.

The list includes everything about a Pokemon that can't be changed, such as IVs/PID/EC/OT/TID/SID/origin mark/existing ribbons/met date/met level/Poke Ball/language/etc.

When Bank eventually dies, this list will be frozen forever, and no amount of hacking will ever allow you to circumvent the Bank->Home transfer and get a Pokemon in Gen 8+ that's compatible with Home.

For example, say Bank is dead and you have a Sentret in Gen 7 that you would like to hack-transfer to SV. You can directly edit your SV save file to add a Sentret with a Gen 7 origin mark and whatever details, but it will never, ever be allowed into Home because Home will always say "you have a Gen 7 origin mark, but I never saw a Sentret with this exact set of IVs/EC/OT/ID/etc. enter through Bank before." The Sentret you edited is now permanently marked as illegal/hacked and will never be part of your Home collection. Particularly heartbreaking for stuff like ribbon projects and old event Pokemon.

(the technical details are more complicated than this but this description suffices)

 

[bdt2002]

Something potentially interesting I was thinking about not too long ago: it took a very long time for this method to be quote-on-quote "discovered", but I remember during the late 2010s there was what I could best described as some kind of "internal exploit" allowing players with an Internet connection to re-access old event data from the Generation 4 and 5 games for the original Nintendo DS system. Whether or not discussion of said exploit is even allowed on Smogon... I'm going to be honest, I have no idea so I apologize in advance if I'm breaking any rules here. For what it's worth, I don't plan on posting how the exploit works or what can be done with it here. In any case, I think what I'm trying to say here is that once the servers go offline in April, there seems to at least be a possibility of the same kind of "discovery" for the Generation 6 and 7 games for the Nintendo 3DS. To the best of my knowledge, it seems like Pokémon and items distributed over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or, in this case, the very similar Nintendo Network, might have their data internally stored either in the files of the game or on the individual cartridges themselves somehow- essentially functioning as the technological successor to the non- Wi-Fi distribution of the original Pokémon Ranger Manaphy Egg in 2006. This is purely just a theory, of course. I don't want to act like I understand how these games operate, because I don't. All I know for certain is that for anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, when April comes around, you might find you have some new toys to play around with.

 

[Zowayix]

Something potentially interesting I was thinking about not too long ago: it took a very long time for this method to be quote-on-quote "discovered", but I remember during the late 2010s there was what I could best described as some kind of "internal exploit" allowing players with an Internet connection to re-access old event data from the Generation 4 and 5 games for the original Nintendo DS system. Whether or not discussion of said exploit is even allowed on Smogon... I'm going to be honest, I have no idea so I apologize in advance if I'm breaking any rules here. For what it's worth, I don't plan on posting how the exploit works or what can be done with it here. In any case, I think what I'm trying to say here is that once the servers go offline in April, there seems to at least be a possibility of the same kind of "discovery" for the Generation 6 and 7 games for the Nintendo 3DS. To the best of my knowledge, it seems like Pokémon and items distributed over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or, in this case, the very similar Nintendo Network, might have their data internally stored either in the files of the game or on the individual cartridges themselves somehow- essentially functioning as the technological successor to the non- Wi-Fi distribution of the original Pokémon Ranger Manaphy Egg in 2006. This is purely just a theory, of course. I don't want to act like I understand how these games operate, because I don't. All I know for certain is that for anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, when April comes around, you might find you have some new toys to play around with.

Non-technical explanation:

The 3DS has better network security than the DS. (It's the same network security your bank's website probably uses.)

The DS:
Stranger: Hi, I'm the event server.
DS: Ok event server, what events are available? (arbitrarily trusts any stranger that just says it's the event server)

The 3DS:
Stranger: Hi, I'm the event server.
3DS: Ok, in 2011 the real event server gave me a [red lock] at the factory and only the real event server has the [red key]. I also have a [blue lock] and only I have the [blue key]. Here, I'm going to put my [blue lock] in a box, put the [red lock] on it, and send you the box. Now you should have a copy of my [blue lock]. Ok event server, what events are available? Please put your answer inside a box with my [blue lock] on it or else I will ignore the answer.
Stranger: crap I don't have the blue lock

tl;dr It's impossible without a modded 3DS. A modded 3DS can switch out the [real red lock] with a [custom red lock] that the modder has the [custom red key] to. The [real red key] has physically never left buildings owned by nintendo. In fact, if nintendo follows standard security protocols, it has never touched a USB stick or any computer with an internet connection, so even the Gigaleak couldn't have found it. Custom event servers for the 3DS already exist (won't link here). But they require a modded 3DS.

 

[Altissimo]

iirc doesn't bank/home transfers also like, mark each pokemon sent through it so that home would be able to tell if the Pokemon was a legitimate home transfer or a hacked one (opening up the possibility that your home account would get banned for hacking)

 

[Zowayix]

iirc doesn't bank/home transfers also like, mark each pokemon sent through it so that home would be able to tell if the Pokemon was a legitimate home transfer or a hacked one (opening up the possibility that your home account would get banned for hacking)

Yup:

Home's servers keep track of a giant list of all Pokemon that have ever entered through Bank since day 1, and starting in v3.1.0 (Teal Mask compatibility) it's strictly enforced that all Pokemon entering Home with an USUM or earlier origin mark (or no origin mark) must exactly match this list, otherwise the deposit will be blocked.

The list includes everything about a Pokemon that can't be changed, such as IVs/PID/EC/OT/TID/SID/origin mark/existing ribbons/met date/met level/Poke Ball/language/etc.

When Bank eventually dies, this list will be frozen forever, and no amount of hacking will ever allow you to circumvent the Bank->Home transfer and get a Pokemon in Gen 8+ that's compatible with Home.

For example, say Bank is dead and you have a Sentret in Gen 7 that you would like to hack-transfer to SV. You can directly edit your SV save file to add a Sentret with a Gen 7 origin mark and whatever details, but it will never, ever be allowed into Home because Home will always say "you have a Gen 7 origin mark, but I never saw a Sentret with this exact set of IVs/EC/OT/ID/etc. enter through Bank before." The Sentret you edited is now permanently marked as illegal/hacked and will never be part of your Home collection. Particularly heartbreaking for stuff like ribbon projects and old event Pokemon.

(the technical details are more complicated than this but this description suffices)

Bank doesn't do this though, only Home.

 

[Altissimo]

that would require the fans making a modded version of home to circumvent lol and even then it might still be impossible

 

[R_N]

I assume this is also why Go Pokemon can't really be hacked; the transfer probably communicates with Home in such a way to go "hold up this thing didn't touch Home first" (or Let's Go I guess, for the first 151)

 

[Zowayix]

that would require the fans making a modded version of home to circumvent lol and even then it might still be impossible

Modded versions of Home already exist (requiring a modded Switch and a modded 3DS of course); they're just permanently incompatible with the real Home (any Pokemon sent through modded Home can never go through real Home in the future).

I assume this is also why Go Pokemon can't really be hacked; the transfer probably communicates with Home in such a way to go "hold up this thing didn't touch Home first" (or Let's Go I guess, for the first 151)

Exactly; if you hack a Pokemon with a Go origin mark into any Gen 8+ game, and then try to deposit into Home, Home will always say "I don't remember generating this set of IVs/EC/OT/ID/etc. before during a Go Transporter transfer" and block it.

Let's Go is hackable though; you can hack a Pokemon with a Go origin mark into Let's Go and it will basically say "Hi Home, I claim that I generated this Pokemon before during a Go Park transfer" and Home has no way of verifying that Let's Go is telling the truth, because Home has never seen this Pokemon before. Go has, but lol Niantic never programmed a verifier for this

 

[doipy hooves]

To the best of my knowledge, it seems like Pokémon and items distributed over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or, in this case, the very similar Nintendo Network, might have their data internally stored either in the files of the game or on the individual cartridges themselves somehow- essentially functioning as the technological successor to the non- Wi-Fi distribution of the original Pokémon Ranger Manaphy Egg in 2006. This is purely just a theory, of course. I don't want to act like I understand how these games operate, because I don't. All I know for certain is that for anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, when April comes around, you might find you have some new toys to play around with.

Game Freak was not implementing every possible event distribution in the game ahead of time like Ranger Manaphy. The custom wifi servers are just hosting their own Mystery Gifts that cycle randomly.

 

[SadisticMystic]

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63227

The specific date of the shutdown (again, excluding Bank) has now been announced: April 9th, midnight British time.