Nintendo has disabled the SpotPass feature of Swapnote – also known as Nintendo Letter Box. The move was apparently initiated after Nintendo found out that some users have been exchanging “offensive material” with other users. According to the company’s website, the feature has been deactivated to “limit the risk of any inappropriate activity or misuse of a service.” The Special Notes services, which were also sent via SpotPass, are also stopped. Read Nintendo’s notice about the service for the software below:
“Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known as Nintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material. Nintendo has been investigating ways of preventing this and determined it is best to stop the SpotPass feature of Swapnote because it allows direct exchange of photos and was actively misused.
“Nintendo always wants to provide a positive experience for all consumers and limit the risk of any inappropriate activity or misuse of a service. We feel it is important on this occasion to take this action.
“We are very sorry for any inconvenience to the many consumers who have been using this service responsibly; however this decision was made considering the point that many minors also use this feature of Swapnote. Thank you for your understanding.
“Nintendo will continue to work to ensure more consumers are aware of our Parental Control features, which allow parents to manage their children’s experience on our systems.”
Well thats onixpected
aside from the joke, thats prety sad that was a good way to get friend codes and cool notes
I saw what you did there.
How could you get friend codes from swapnote when you needed to have a persons code already in order to send/receive notes with that person?
Wow…thanks a-fucking-lot stupid bitch nintendo! i guess we will just have to use the very innovative friend list message system…where u can type exactly 16 letters! Wow Just Wow! Why couldn’t they just send a warning note!? And if they are taking swapnote away! then give us that fucking Flipnote3D already we’ve waited like a century!! But i even heard they disabled the friends-gallery for Flipnote3D (japan)! This is one of the reasons why i hate Nintendo, they gotta be so damn limited with fuckin everything! So in conclusion: Fuck you Nintendo!!
It’s their service; they do whatever the f*** they want with it.
But it’s because of us they even have a service.
thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!! @link fucking comeon nintendo stop being fucking strict!!!!!!! like microsoft & stop steeling their ideas!!!
nintendo please bring it back & don’t think about putting admins on swapnote or reporting on it!!!!
fuck you nintendo!!!! god this is probably why you got wii u haters!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nin you’re gonna have alot of hatemail!! you fuckers fucking watch original bloodace videos for 1ce but no you gotta act like kids are harmless & angels a but by 3rd garde they say shit they say fuck by 6 grade they smoke & by 9th they drink & fuck god just fuck you im done buying ur shit nintendo!! im just gonna stick with sony & microsoft i may troll on XBOX live & get banned for but who give a fuck!!
iwata fucking look @ ur fans see if they are pissed or just fucking die in a hole you bitchs
wow… i bet nintendo is gonna hire stupid un educated moron ADMINS & put them on it……… -.- thank god i didn’t get 3ds
ur gonna get alot of hate mail fagtendo
I see what you did there
So mad at this..
If you are upset about this please take the time to write them about your disapproval, that is what I am doing.
Here is the link to Nintendo of America’s Customer Service Form:
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform/
I never got to use it because nobody I knew had a 3DS!! -_-
I never got to use it either. I think I might be the only person in my whole state that has one. I found people in the 3DS forum that were looking for friends, so I offered to add them and added them on my system, but they never accepted, so I still have yet to send a note to anyone, and I bought my 3DS at launch. I guess I’m just outta luck, eh?
NO!!!!! i iz mad. mAAAAAAAAAAd!!! D:* ;'( iUsed it evehyday ;\ we alwayz exchanged penis and vajynaz and it wuz so much FUN WAI NINTENDO, WAI!!!!! D:>
no more swap pen!s )’;>
Then we need a legit messaging system
Party chat with the crappy 3DS mic? lol. Or with a headset…
Come on Nintendo, all you have to do is banned them or disable their console from using it rather than disable it where all uses it
It’s a private chat service so Nintendo wouldn’t know who sent what. Last time I checked Swapnote didn’t had anything to report notes, and nintendo can’t monitor it like Miiverse.
wait Nintendo can’t monitor Miiverse ? so who moderates it ? voluntarily moderate it ?
You misread his comment. he said “[…] monitor it like Miiverse.”
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo please……………..
I never really figured out how to work that feature anyways! Lol
Drawing dicks and cats and dicks again was the only usage of Swapnote. And they’ve just took it from us.
WHAT? does this mean swapnote will no longer work?
Well, you still can setup your Streetpass greeting, but well, yeah. Swapnote is basically dead.
I couldn’t care less about the street pass feature, Yes you’re right Swapnote is dead now.
Listen Nintendo, pics or it didn’t happen
pics or GTFO lol xD
My little sister is only 5, she loved sending me terrible but heartfelt drawings, she’s going to be heart broken :-(
Guess she will have to draw you pictures on old fashion paper now…
then what is Swapnote anymore good for??? Just to get message notes from Nintendo? That’s stupid! They might take it away altogether.
in everything there are always those who misuse things, does that justify to take it away from everyone else?? I think not. Stupid that is what this is, period.
I really liked to send messages to my friend back and fro with picks etc.
it would be better though to offer a real instant message service.
Never used it anyway so I don’t care.
“Special Notes services are also stopped”
idk man, did you read the notice, or
I guess I got too upset and didn’t really notice the Special Notes Services also being stopped. So yeah, my bad.
if it makes u feel any better i helped the cause. haha now u all gotta pay 4 my mistake and i never once gave 2 shits
i had the most fun!!
keep the tears cumin
disappointing that we all have to suffer just because some pricks thought “hey lets not only make trouble on the internet, lets also show some little kids our dicks because its funny for us” I really hope Nintendo implement a anti-perv feature and reintroduce the Swapnote spotpass soon
ahaha thats wat u get wen ur fanbase is mostly lil kids and babies playing pokemon. keep cryin baby
At least we have good games. Go back and play Playstation all stars battle royale and your little big planet and get lost.
ahaha yea yall got the best games like our leftovers and gimped shit lol hope wii party u and wii fit u keep u warm thru the long cold winter
Yeah, they will. Along with the other fantastic titles, Mario 3D World, Zelda Wind Waker HD, Pikmin 3 and Wonderful 101. Oh, and i guess since you said winter, my winter isn’t till next year, so i’ll also have Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong and a bunch of other amazing titles. It’s gonna be a great winter!
Don’t be a dummy! Stop putting food in that troll’s tummy!
seems like Flipnote Studio 3D is also affected (in Japan.)
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/information/2013/1101.html
oh, btw, the website says フレンドうごメモギャラリー, which means the friend gallery is only affected.
then it will be also affected once it hits the US and other countries. This all pisses me off.
IKR.
nintendo havent localized the app, and all this crazy things are happening already!
Thanks idiots. Now the innocents get punished. -sigh- Why can’t Ninten be smart and ban the users that are misusing swapnote?
yeah really. Nintendo being a frigging baby sitting company….
This is just crazy. Why should Nintendo even care? And stopping the service entirely? Madness.
I think it’s time for Nintendo to grow some balls and stop catering to children. Really.
That’s the thing.
Nintendo’s target audience is the whole family, which happens to include children.
While it is true that they could’ve improved the software with a patch or something rather than outright discontinue the service, that doesn’t stop the fact that they’re trying to take into account that everyone uses it.
IE, both kids and adults.
That’s one of the reasons why they’re releasing the 2DS while also selling the 3DS alongside it: so that parents who don’t have to worry about going to set parental restrictions on the 3D features can have an alternate, while the older children and adults, who can handle the 3D effects better, can enjoy the games in 3D.
Yeah but I still think it’s on the parents… Either set the parental controls or just know the risks.
That’s a stupid move from Nintendo :( I’m so pissed
This is why we can’t have something nice!
@Lazara The Last this is why we can’t have nice things! :(
I really think Nintendo should stop feeling responsible for crappy parents. If they didn’t care enough to set/look for the parental controls and don’t heed the rather obvious and uniform “M for Mature Ages 17+ (several reasons here)” sign on the box then that’s their problem, not any game companies.
I never used the Spot Pass feature in Swapnote. I only use Street Pass with my brother and niece (and any strangers in public that I pass, if that even works). I never understood the REPLY option on Swapnotes I receive. I mean, the only option on it is to send via Spot Pass. I can’t understand why “Send via Street Pass” isn’t on the options for replies? I can never reply to my brother or niece’s Swapnotes. Also, I wish you could send more than one at a time. I’m sick of being limited to only one Swapnote every several hours.
Spotpass was close to sending the message instantly to it’s receivers. So when they powered on their system or whatever they would see the reply. The limitation was only the single reply use.
Street pass only works if you are friends with the person. So your random street passes never get the message, nor you get yours.
Man, that sucks! All this time I thought random people were receiving my drawings on Swapnote. Every time Nintendo has some kind of cool option, mode or feature in their games etc., it’s ruined by limitations.
They likely limited it because they don’t you want you street passing your friend code. Which I don’t get why not, you can street pass custom messages in Mario Tennis Open and other games that can contain this information. So why Swap note didn’t exchange messages, it was silly.
On the bright side, people seem to think that Swapnote is being shut down in preparation for Miiverse.
you are all so pissed until its your daughters pics going around, sad world we live in, sucks we all get punished, but if it prevents one POS from jacking off to a 7 year old then im all for it
So your saying 7 year olds are sluts? That’s what your saying then?
The w̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and the needs of the one.
-Spock
And you’re the shitty parent that didn’t bother to set up the parental controls to protect your daughter.
Jesus fucking Christ Nintendo, really? You know, if there was an account system you wouldn’t have to shut down the entire service, just ban the people who did it.
“Account sysem?” What is this “account system” you speak of, witch?!
well, you know that system on the wiiu that is perfectly implemented there and what should have been on the 3ds a long time ago
It’s not quite “so perfect” yet. They need to let the NNIDs able to log in to other consoles, then they have it 100%
Yeah. Looks like our group is about to get fucked. This is a pretty low blow.
look at da babys cryin cuz they daddy took there lil toy away aw boohoo donut worry tho u still got loose mommy at home too exchange hot pics wit
…donut worry? :/
Came home an hour ago and checked my Swapnote.. Wow, this was a bad move. Swapnote – when you know how to use it – is/was one of the great features of the 3ds, right behind streetpass. My friend list and I exchanged letters all of the time, and this is a big let down from Nintendo. You can’t stop people from being idiots just by shutting it down. I meet people that need to be shut down every week on animal crossing – Would they shut that form of messaging down too? Or Pokémon X and Y voice chat? Garbage way to kick off November.
The message below show MY IDEA which is based in MY OPINION. i DONT know ANYTHING about market stuff or about solds in general please dont be too hatefull :)
Thought i FUCKIN love nintendo since i was eight this prove that an inteligent move to improve the solds is by releasing a new wiiu model cheaper without internet features and without something less maybe retrocompatibility o sd slots (as wii mini). Why? well they are not using the online feature well, i havent play more than three times online, they dont give us online play in their first party titles such as super mario 3d world even third parties such as batman take off the online features AND to be honest miiverse isnt that cool i’ve never post anything is like twitter but without so many users.
What would we get with this? CHEAPER games just like the batman arkham, cheaper system and a big focus in party titles.
THIS IS JUST MY OPINION wii mini hasnt sold well but i think that this waa because the price cut were ridiculous. . . 50 bucks.left without any game. . . But with a better price cut and a good game in pack i think this should work.
You “don’t know anything about ‘solds’ in general”?!
gnrioesndifngioesanoijnSGRTEISNDIORHJGFORIEJSOIJDIOFGHDOIHSAIH!!!
Dammit you broke my grammar meter!
now how to we know when the directs are coming?
I guess the people who call Nintendo “kiddie” consoles are thr prople who kept soliciting kids on Swapnote.
C’mon guys…
ahahaha yea cus thats all u gonna find on nintendo anyways nothin but lil kids
Nintendo, seriously. Quit disabling thing just because parents aren’t taken action over their kids actions. Like said in previous comments disable the ones who are fucking it up!
Like I said before even on the wii u miiverse make a “kids only” area instead of punishing adults.
Meh. Who cares if Miiverse, infinitely more useful, is coming anyways?
We’re about to get miiverse on 3DS anyways, right?
HAHAHA omfg who cares. Kids are no angels these days. I never even used Swapnote. Found It pointless.
There’s more to this than meets the eye… more on this coming soon…
Republicou isso em Curiosidades na internete comentado:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY9nBbqw7IU
HOW DARE THEM!?
Oh I see so instead of finding a solution Nintendo goes and bans almost 40 million of us from using it, clever.
I have never ever sent any “bad” pictures to anyone… Just a cat that was “dead” to one person I’m my class nothing els… And I have never got one…. Whyyyy????? At the moment I hate nintendos way to “solv” those problems….
I have had the same swapnote friends from January of last year, over a year and a half ago. I got them from a message board I no longer frequent, and they are from all over the world in different places. I enjoyed talking to them and talking about upcoming games. Aside from setting my friend card message as my email, I’m not sure how to contact them now…
There are literally hundreds of ways Nintendo could have handled this issue. Of course I don’t want little kids receiving pictures of a guys penis either, but we are moving into an online era of gaming and parents need to read up on what their kids are up to and what features are online. There needs to be supervision. If there were accounts of some kind it would be easier to restrict download of age rated software and to ban people.
With Swapnote gone look at the bright side. This may indicate that we are one step closer to Miiverse on 3ds! And Miiverse has picture posting and a full messaging system!
I’m REALLY pissed off, considering the fact I just used it for the first time yesterday and I had a lot of fun with it……
Sooo…. -_-, Because some parents were too dumb to put on parental control/delete the friends who sent their kids inappropriate pictures we now lost Swapnote completely?
I hate dumb parents. Instead of taking control they just do this:
Kid: MOMMY *CRY CRY* I GOT NASTY PICTURES
Mommy: *Phones Nintendo* NINTENDO *CRY CRY* MY KID GOT NASTY PICTURES! I’LL SUE YOU
……….. let’s hope we get Miiverse on the 3DS soon.
Reblogged this on TrueSelfGaming.
Reblogged this on FIRST CONTACT.
Oh come now, let’s get real Nintendo. If kids aren’t exchanging inappropriate photos by their 3DS, they’ll be doing it by the myriad of other devices that are capable of the same thing and far more on top of it. I’m all for a family friendly ethos but this is ridiculous.
Exactly.
That’s really stupid, if people didn’t want offensive notes then they shouldn’t be friends with them. The only reason I used Swapnote was to exchange lewd note with strangers over the internet I had added. Guess it’s time to delete them.
Interesting that they police Nintendo apps, mii verse and can get baned for using the word ” hell”! But wont police and ban developers for gimped games not including online, dlc, or plain halfed assed games or enticing pre orders that include goodies which are lies ti begin with! REALLY Nintendo, think parents should actually police thier own children and adults police thier self they can block ect, also thier is so much more to do but spend thier resources on small issues like this, Some of Us Are GROwn nOW Nintendo!
I see no reason to have Swapnote anymore. I mean seriously, WHO USES THE BLOODY STREETPASS FEATURE ON THERE ANYWAYS, ESPECIALLY IF THOSE STREETPASS NOTED CAN ONLY BE SENT TO FRIENDS. FUCK YOU NINTENDO AND YOUR DUMBSHIT MOVES
OK is it just me or does anyone else think Nintendo needs to stop playing parental guardian to everyone that buys their system. I love Nintendo and I have the 3DS and WiiU but it’s things like these that chase away adult gamers that are not hardcore Nintendo fans. Nintendo needs to realize that they can’t control everything that happens on their consoles. not because some minors decide to send inappropriate messages with the service means everyone needs to suffer and loose the service. These kids I’m sure has the world of means to exchange inappropriate messages.
This is bullshit and not a move nintendo should be making right about now.
This decision is like circumcision: Of course, you eliminate the risks of certain unique problems if you completely cut the thing off; a terrible, almost childish solution.
This is ridiculous. My and my pals used Swapnote all the time. Instead of disabling the whole damn thing maybe Nintendo should of just removed the option to add a photo or ban the people who were participating in messaging vulgar picures.
Sorry but I don’t back this decision in any way!
Lol told you Nintendo doesn’t give a shit about there fan base. Lets punish EVERYONE for a few clowns mistakes
#lolnintendo
#loldatlogic
Good. It was interesting but a sorry excuse for a messaging app.
Now give me Pictochat 2,0
Even when I’m a 27 year old that’s been a fan of the company since 88, I feel the urge to say that “Nintendo is for the kiddies”.
They don’t even care to really tackle this statement, even when they supposedly hate that stigma. BS! You need to know the guy’s code to send them a Note, so what we do on for our own amusement it’s our thing only! I didn’t even use Swapnote that much, but the principle is solid! Stop trying to be protective of the kids with awful parents!
What’s next? You’re gonna take down the game chat on the games that supported because GOD FORBID we curse while talking to a friend online?
Nintendo are you really in the position to be pissing off your fans? I don’t think so. Wow what a bunch of fucking retards. I can’t believe how stupid Nintendo has been the last couple of years. Swapnote was something your fans enjoyed so you go off and find an excuse to get rid of it. You dumbass motherfuckers are going to drive all your loyal fans away and then you really will be screwed. You are in no fucking position to be making these rash shit decisions that will only discourage people from buying your products. Dumbasses are running this fucking company I swear.
This is a better outlet for it….
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform/
Stupid decision :@
So all the people i chat to on this i have no way of contacting them at all now, now we cannot arrange to play games together or meet up in New Leaf etc.
It might be ok for people in Japan where everyone lives next to each other, but not here in the west.
Nintendo has really been straining their relationship with me over the release of the 3DS & the WiiU both of which i bought at launch.
Well forget it now, Nintendo can sod off !
Started a petition to bring it back. Doubt it will do anything, but I just want to send a message to Nintendo that we are not ok with this.
https://www.change.org/petitions/nintendo-restore-spotpass-functionality-in-swapnote
how pathetic. they’re so fucking kid friendly it’s starting to blind them. if some clown sends offensive notes that you don’t like, you delete the person from your friend’s list. problem solved. shutting down an entire service just because you don’t want to expose kids stuff they most likely already know or seen is stupid.
I didn’t use Swapnote anyway, so it’s no skin off my back.
And I’m certain a majority of the offensive material came from the degenerates who make up the My Nintendo News community. Thanks assholes.
kids ruin everything.
This irritates me SO much. I NEVER sent inappropriate things and NOBODY EVER sent me any either. The worse thing that happened was a ACNL picture was sent to me where they made there animal say a cuss word for their catchphrase. How come only a few do this and we all have to suffer the consequences. My main use of app: send photos I took of lake and flowers, send photos of my real artwork, tell people about my 3ds problems(top screen goes completely black a lot), and sometimes make plans to play multiplayer games with friends on friend list. I LOVED this app and used it a lot. Its basically useless now, taking up space. I understand maybe if a kid received an inappropriate message from an adult that’s a problem but why did the kid have that adult on their friends list? Same for kids sending things to other kids. Whether it was an adult or a child doing it they could have deleted that person. Don’t get rid of these functions for EVERYONE maybe it should have been suspended only for the people that did it!
Fuck Nintendo and there shit wiiu
Nope.
Awww, but I liked SwapNote…
Why????
What’s up colleagues, how is the whole thing, and what you desire to say on the topic
of this paragraph, in my view its really amazing
in support of me.