The end has finally come for Miiverse. Nintendo officially pulled the plug on its odd little attempt at a gaming-centric social network today, as it announced it would back in August. The Miiverse icon remains on 3DS (I just checked, and I assume the same is true for Wii U) but attempting to load it will produce a sad little "The service has been discontinued. Thank you for using this service" system message.
At least that now-useless icon isn't the only thing we have to remember Miiverse by. If you visit the official website for Miiverse (which could be used to view posts but not create them, back when it was active), you'll be greeted by a massive "Thank You" mosaic image composed entirely of farewell drawings from users. Click the icon in the top right corner of the image below to load the whole, huge thing.
Each one of those little squares is a drawing by a Miiverse user! I'm not sure if they're all different or if there are some repeats, but it's impressive either way. For reference, here's the full-size version of just that little figure's smiley face in the upper right.
Nintendo's still selling a good number of 3DS systems so I expect a future update will remove the dilapidated Miiverse icon from the dashboard. As for Wii U, well, it's probably gonna have a pretty empty plaza from now on, since that whole thing was populated by Miiverse users and posts. Meanwhile, Switch owners will keep sharing screenshots and videos to Facebook and Twitter, never knowing the simple joy of unlocking Miiverse stamps and appreciating unreasonably good art from some anonymous Zelda fan in Japan.
