Nintendo says Fire Emblem Fates will be removed from the eShop a month before the store goes offline

Zuh?

As Nintendo continues to remind us that life is fleeting, and so is the 3DS eShop, they just happened to pop in this week and tell us that not everything is going to go the distance. In fact, while the 3DS eShop is set to be destroyed on March 27, 2023, at least one game will be removed earlier than that: Fire Emblem Fates. Yep, the Fire Emblem Fates eShop version’s days are numbered.

Via a new tweet from Nintendo UK, we now know that Fire Emblem Fates will be wiped from the 3DS eShop on February 28, 2023. There’s a twist, though.

So because of the way Fire Emblem Fates was designed, you can’t access all of the DLC until you’ve finished Chapter 6. To accommodate for that, you can buy the DLC for it through March 27, 2023. Yeah, it’s weird. Nintendo essentially sees this as a grace period, so people don’t buy the core game, then get locked out of DLC entirely. Now, after buying Fates, you have roughly a month to access the DLC.

The whole thing is odd, and the workaround needed to ensure that people don’t get locked out just begs the question: with Nintendo’s coffers, why not just keep the eShop running longer? This seems like it’s bending over backward to accommodate a first-party game that’s still seemingly selling, so why not allow that legacy to continue unfettered?

Ah well, this is the digital future many people warned you about over a decade ago!

Chris Carter

Reviews Director, Co-EIC – Chris has been enjoying Destructoid avidly since 2008. He finally decided to take the next step, make an account, and start blogging in January of 2009. Now, he’s staff!