Mario & Luigi Busted

Yesterday we shared the news that a rather elaborate loophole in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team on 3DS had allowed gamers to post images from the web browser onto its Miiverse community; while some used this feature for comedic effect, others posted mature and explicit images.

It's an odd bug in how complex it is to use — you need to have avoided last year's update for the game (a patch that seemed meaningless at the time but now makes sense) and go through a fiddly process. Nevertheless, plenty were taking advantage, and Nintendo's Miiverse moderating team was banning some users, removing posts or — in less serious cases — simply blacking out images.

In our article covering the issue we suggested that Nintendo could either implement some code to force-update copies of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team when they're next run, functionality used in updates for various other games, or take the easy way out and simply block all screenshots on the community. We hoped for the former though, so far, the company has gone for the latter option. Below is the message from the European / Australian version of the community confirming that screenshots are no longer allowed.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the screenshot feature has been disabled in this community.

We are looking into the cause of the problem. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Before we break out the pitchforks and lament Nintendo's heavy-handed approach, we should acknowledge that it may be taking screens down temporarily to implement a permanent fix. Based on past efforts and issues with image-sharing software, however, there's a possibility that Nintendo will simply leave screenshots off and wait for the issue to fade from view, without ever resolving it properly.

We'll see, but the fun's over for mischievous posters on that community, while the Miiverse moderators can breath easily once again.

Thanks to Ryan Millar for the heads up.

[source miiverse.nintendo.net]