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This is a sad day for Wii owners. In answer to one of my earlier articles, it has happened; Nintendo have rendered the Wii FreeLoader useless with their latest Wii Firmware Update. And just to add insult to injury, they've also targeted certain Wii homebrew projects and terminated their functions.
Reports have come in from FreeLoader users worldwide, who noticed that as soon as they had downloaded the latest Wii Firmware Update, which supposedly was required in order for gamers to take advantage of the upcoming WiiWare service, their copies of FreeLoader just "stopped working". It had been assumed from the start that any attempt at creating a region-lock breaker would be cracked down on by Nintendo. The fact that homebrew development for the console has also reached a massive speed bump isn't too favourable either, as we were just starting to see some truly creative software appearing through the "Twilight Hack".
There are, of course, many consumers claiming that their copies of FreeLoader haven't been affected, but just to be absolutely sure it is recommended that any Wii owner who wants to avail of Codejunkies' FreeLoader do not download the latest Wii update!
UPDATE: We're not sure exactly who it is that is claiming that this recent update has prohibited their Freeloaders from working, however this new update blocking the Freeloader is only true to a certain extent. This was a firmware update, not exactly an update to the system menu. Hopefully you're following me so far. This new firmware is IOS37. Whenever a game or channel is launched it tells the system which version of the IOS it needs to be run on.
Currently there is no software that uses IOS37 and the system menu currently uses IOS30. However, once the system menu is issued another update to make use of IOS37 this will be the point where "Trucha-Signed" discs (Wii Freeloader) will no longer continue working. Homebrew channels would also be considered as "invalid" by the system. The Twilight Hack should remain unaffected however.
So, long story short, this recent firmware update shouldn't block your Freeloader yet, but know that at some point in the near future Nintendo plans to issue a system update which will have the system make use of IOS37, and thus block the Freeloader. It's unknown if the Freeloader will be able to find a way around the user ever needing to update their Wii or what Datel plans to do next. If you have a Freeloader and it has stopped working since this update you may want to take another look.
It seems like things just keep going back and forth on this issue. At first it was said to have been an early April Fool's joke and was then said to have been real to an extent, so all we can tell you is that the Wii firmware was indeed updated and that there are conflicting reports regarding the future of the Wii Freeloader. We will simply have to await concrete confirmation on the matter in the future.
