Online Play For Steel Diver: Sub Wars On 3DS Has Been Discontinued Early

This was a cool game. I didn’t play online. But I wish Nintendo did more games like this. Smaller scale games that you can just pick up and play. Street Pass, Pocket Jockey or Rusty’s Baseball….

Even if not many people were playing this game today, why not discontinue it with the rest of the 3DS online? That seems pretty lame, honestly.

Was this a different version than the launch title, which I'm somewhat embarrassed to say I still have sealed?

Oh, no! I'm guessing the 0 people that played this game are going to be very upset!

I actually booted this up in 2022 to have one more go at it. In my several hours it was surprisingly active, but the people still playing were way better than me. Sad to see this old friend fade away, a unique competitive experience for sure.

@SuperBro64 It went down in September abruptly and Nintendo couldn’t get it back. Likely a server or app failure. So they cut their losses rather than spend money having someone trying to do disaster recovery. Makes sense really, just not worth the ROI especially since they were gonna sunset the service in a few months anyway. Allows their server team to focus on other issues.

https://nintendoeverything.com/steel-diver-sub-wars-online-play-ends-early/

@FatBeverly @Pat_trick People couldn't play online for months because multi billion company was incompetent in rectifying an issue for a decade old game.

That one guy is in shambles. Screaming whyyyyyy into the void

@Porky And? My joke was at the fact that it's not a popular game. It had absolutely nothing to do with Nintendo and their lack of competence.

There's probably a close knit community of like 5 people who still played this game who are really bummed right now.

Steel Diver!
You've been down so long, thank god for piracy! 🎶

Rip to the game that taught me morse code o7

@Pat_trick Your basis that it's an unpopular game prior to the online functionality being stripped is...

Woah. That's a blast from the past. I think I had an okay time with the game way back when.

@Burning_Spear Yeah, two different games.

@Porky It's an old game, it was never a popular franchise, most people in the world don't play on a 3DS anymore. Should I go on?
Or you just want to argue with someone on the internet for the sake of it?

This was a very popular as I had been playing it quite recently. The game had lots of japanese players. The reason people will be some what annoyed with this is a number of the subs can only be unlocked via online play. So that means now using unoffical servers is the only way to unlock them.

I watched The Hunt for Red October a couple nights ago and all I could think was that I should drop in for a round on this game. I admittedly didn’t play much but I enjoyed it and am sad to see it go.

I loved this game, last I played there was pretty dedicated few people on unranked worldwide lobbies at lv 99. I hope unofficial servers can get this one back up and running.

Oh no one gamer is upset I'm the funniest guy in the office.

Too bad. This game had pretty cool online multiplayer gameplay in that it was incredibly technical and focused on precision. Also, the Pre-Game chat had to be sent through Morse Code.

@Pat_trick I hear what you're saying, and that's all great, but I stopped caring. I wish you the same.

@FatBeverly You state no one is playing this game; only wanting to because of the announcement of the online service closure and this article. No, because it's been disfunct for 4 months. Before that, the activity may have not been booming, but there was a dedicated playerbase.

The world doesn't revolve around you two, just because you hadn't touched these games doesn't mean it was without players. Nintendo spent half a year resolving Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 to get it back running, if it was any later they likely would had discontinued sooner as well like Steel Divers. Those last generation games are thriving last I played this weekend.

Steel Diver 3 confirmed!!!!!1111

This is one that I just never got into. Always seemed like a cool idea and something I’d play eventually. Guess that “eventually” never came lol

Get Radar Mission on the Game Boy app and that'll do me.

I accepted a long time ago that online functionality in games is a temporary feature, and the companies only have a duty to support it as long as there's a sensible community of players still regularly playing it. In the case of this game, I imagine it hasn't been viable for a long time.

As long as shutting down servers doesn't render an entire game that I've paid full-price for unplayable, I'm fine with news like this.

I actually bought a digital submarine in this game with real money. Barely played the game. Money well spent? XD

@Pat_trick I'm pretty sure the game was quite popular during its first year. No esport, but something that you could regularly find matches for. So I'm not gonna buy that.

People were going to start finding matches before they went away for good. So it's not an apt reason to go "oh well"

Was a cool game at the time, unique for Nintendo. I know it had a dedicated following

@Porky hey sorry to ask but could we be friends on Wii U? I actually sent a friend request to someone named porkyminch. Doubt it was you though lol

I hope they don't do the same with mario maker 1 early, still playing it!!

Damn, I bought this game for $4. I haven't played it yet.

@Porky I played it at launch and it was unpopular then, I imagine that only got worse as the years went on.