Nintendo Deactivates Swapnote Services

[Karasz]

The Story

Apparently Nintendo caught wind of the fact that people, mostly including minors, have been using Swapnote to send to each other material that could be considered offensive. Other websites are reporting that people are abusing the image sharing system to send pictures of photographed or hand-drawn dicks to each other. To prevent this type of thing from continuing to happen, Nintendo decided their best option was to shut down the service for good until a better alternative can be found to prevent this type of thing from happening again.

And this, people, is why Nintendo often refuses to give us nice things.

[Ercdouken]

Terrible decision Nintendo.

[Sifer]

So, it looks like I admired all the 3D features and the technological achievement and not once thought about drawing dicks.

Funny that.

-

Remember anything you put for public use. Someone, somewhere will defile it or make a drawing of it, defiling something else

Edited November 1, 2013 by sifer

[Ema Skye]

It only takes one person to ruin something for everyone.

[Solareia]

Well there goes that...

[buttmuncher.ops]

no more dick pics? there goes easy hook ups

[Fruity Insanity]

D:<

WHY?!

...Not that I used it much, BUT STILL!

Hmph.

Nintendo...

[shadowofchaos]

Well... that's disappointing.

Sis won't be able to send me swapnote drawings anymore.

[pinkbubblegum]

Wow. I'm really saddened by this. Swapnote's Spotpass is such a great feature too! I use it to share fun screenshots with my friends, as well as send letters to my 7 year old niece. Gosh, I feel really terrible. He last note to me was ”わすれないで” too and now I can't reply to it...? ;;;

[Fruity Insanity]

Wow. I'm really saddened by this. Swapnote's Spotpass is such a great feature too! I use it to share fun screenshots with my friends, as well as send letters to my 7 year old niece. Gosh, I feel really terrible. He last note to me was ”わすれないで” too and now I can't reply to it...? ;;;

Your niece is Japanese? (Because I cannot fathom another way a child of the age of seven can know Japanese - or any language, at that - unless the language is his/her primary language...)

[Nice]

That's sad. really really sad.

I love to collect swapnote background.

[bookofholsety]

considering the relatively closed structure of Nintendo's internet environment, this seems kinda like an over-reaction on their part

i find this comparable to closing down PictoChat for the same thing: the friend code restriction and how mutual registration is necessary for them to actually work gives the environment a level of mutual trust. in most cases there's a good chance you know the person well enough if you've registered each other's friend codes, so either you trust each other not to send dongs, or you do it all the time and you both get a kick out of it. this really isn't a situation where you can bombard any random person on the entire service with penises all day every day apropos of nothing. you're not sending them dicks unless they know you're sending them dicks

and let's face it if they went into this thinking there absolutely wouldn't be people drawing dicks on an application revolving around drawing messages, to the point of this being a SHOCKING REVELATION to them, well... that's the most naive thing i've ever heard. not to mention, i'm willing to bet that a good portion of the people painting phalluses actually ARE the children they're trying to protect here (if you've ever attended a primary school where there aren't kids giggling at drawing boners then you're either a liar or super unobservant)

i get that Nintendo still wants to try to maintain a "family friendly" image and all, but close one channel and there'll always be another. hell, off the top of my head, there's fucktons of potential for this sort of thing in Animal Crossing, one of their flagship titles of the year and a title which actually HAS the ability to spring (low-res pixilated) cocks upon unexpecting people with the whole visiting random towns thing. i've seen screenshots of pretty hilarious multiplayer interactions on it which would fall under the banner of not exactly being "family friendly". i really hope the axing of Swapnote doesn't set a precedent here...

(disclaimer: i do not draw penises on anything, much less Swapnote. my drawing hand's way too unsteady and they'd almost certainly come out not looking anything like male genitalia)

(whoops while writing this i didn't even realise that a) sending photos on Swapnote was a thing and b) there's probably a legal basis for this in that theoretical kids sending each other photos of their junk (ahaha yeah right) has to sit on or go through their servers at some point so they're more covering their own asses by closing that avenue in case of child porn legal matters. that said, still doesn't explain leaving ACNL open when it can do pretty much the same thing, or as a friend just pointed out to me, allowing game chat in Pokémon XY where people can just describe genitals to each other without even needing friend code confirmation)

Edited November 1, 2013 by bookofholsety

[shadowofchaos]

Your niece is Japanese? (Because I cannot fathom another way a child of the age of seven can know Japanese - or any language, at that - unless the language is his/her primary language...)

Pink is in Japan.

[RJWalker]

It is the universal truth that no matter what it is, there will always be dicks.

[VincentASM]

I'm not a massive user of Swapnote, but pulling it seems a bit extreme.

...And damn, I didn't even realise until somebody mention that this makes stationary collecting almost impossible now.

Guess you could try hooking up with other collectors and sharing a spoof StreetPass relay.

Oh and no more teasing SoC : /

[Ace Tactician]

Oh man that's disappointing to hear, I had just gotten around to using Swapnote too :(

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Surprised it took this long? lol

I never used it anyway.

[Airship Canon]

There will always be dongs. Always.

Ninty's reaction here is stupid though.
Oh yes, instead of disabling the picture thing [there's no way for it to tell between a picture from a game or anything, BTW], disable the whole thing.

Instead of using the system and locking down offending FCs, hit everyone.

How idiotic.

[Ike-Mike]

This is an outrage!

Edited November 1, 2013 by Ike-Mike

[Silver Lightning]

That's so sad.....I never used it much, but I enjoyed collecting stationary and receiving messages from friends.

Now I can't talk to Kaze anymore, seeing as he hasn't been here since July and I only got occasional swapnotes from him.... :(

[shadykid]

exhibit A for why Nintendo doesn't get it

actually more like exhibit L but whatever

[Anacybele]

Well, this sucks. I really liked getting Nintendo news via Swapnotes. Thanks a lot to the idiot assholes that abused the system. >_>

[Esau of Isaac]

There goes cool 40k shorts my friends and I were sending to each other :(

[The Envoy of the Beginning]

http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=216348&sid=ca5448c25ea266c09223587dcb57f9c6

http://kotaku.com/child-predators-were-using-nintendos-swapnote-service-1459304126?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

This could have also very likely influenced Nintendo's decision to shut down its Swapnote services.

Edited November 6, 2013 by BLS

[Esau of Isaac]

Even still, I fail to see Nintendo's intentions here. Kids do stupid shit like this with all electronics, not just the 3DS. Nintendo couldn't have been in much trouble from this unless Japan has a very bizarre legal system, so...I'm still perplexed.