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The FULL lore about the Wii Shop Channel revivals
(Long yap incoming. Also: please do not use this thread to harass anyone
)
Last updated: 2026-07-27
Before starting: the original Wii Shop Channel isn't 100% dead. Nintendo removed the ability to make new purchases on January 30, 2019, but Nintendo's website still says that, "for the time being," users can redownload already-purchased content and transfer it to a Wii U. So when people say "revive the Wii Shop," they usually mean one of four different things:
[*] a real replacement for the original Wii Shop Channel, with title pages, points, tickets, downloads, etc.;
[*] a Wii Shop-looking frontend for homebrew;
[*] a ticket/NUS trick that makes Nintendo's old servers give you titles;
[*] or just a website/app that looks like the Wii Shop and downloads WADs from somewhere else.
Those are very different projects fyi.
But why is reviving the Wii Shop Channel so hard? The other channels were revived and work just fine! Just look at all of the Japanese exclu-
No. Because the Wii Shop Channel is NOT just a web page with music. It's an Opera-powered frontend talking to Nintendo's (bad) servers. The annoying parts are things like:
[*] finding and/or recreating the original HTML pages;
[*] SSL and certificate patching;
[*] IAS/ECS/CAS/shop server behavior;
[*] SOAP responses;
[*] tickets;
[*] title metadata;
[*] points, account history, and gifting;
[*] and installing things to NAND (possibly without bricking people's Wiis???)
The ticket part matters a lot. WiiBrew documents that Wii titles are available on the NUS, but most non-system titles are encrypted with a title key found in a ticket. Tickets live on the NAND, and Wii Shop purchases are basically tied to them. That is why "just download it from the NUS" is not enough. It is also why fake-ticket tools can become dangerous very quickly.
So the scene always had two big problems:
1. Technical difficulty: you need people who actually understand Wii Shop internals, not just basic HTML and CSS.
2. Legal/social risk: if a project serves official WiiWare/VC content, it becomes a piracy project in practice. That brings Nintendo risk, community backlash, drama, and everything else included with the starter pack. But now, let's get to the juicy part!!
Open Shop Channel / WiiSOAP / WSC-Web — the homebrew route
Status: alive-ish / slow / homebrew-only
This is the one that should not be thrown in the same pile alongside random Wii Shop revivals
Open Shop Channel has public GitHub repositories related to using the Wii Shop Channel as a frontend:
[*] WiiSOAP was created in 2019. Its README describes it as a Wii Shop Channel SOAP server for the ECommerce library, aiming to handle tickets, authentication, and shop behavior.
[*] WSC-Web was created in 2020. Its README says it is the frontend loaded through the Wii Shop Channel's embedded Opera browser, acting as a catalog for OSC's homebrew database.
The important part: OSC's approach is a homebrew catalog, not "free WiiWare/VC." That is why people keep bringing it up whenever Wii Shop revival drama happens. It is the safer idea: use the nostalgic shop interface for homebrew, avoid Nintendo's content, and document things publicly.
In 2024, people on GBATemp still described OSC's WSC frontend as private/Patreon-access/slow, but also as something that actually existed and was "not half bad." It is not the same category as RiiShop/Reviive/WiiMart, because it is not trying to recreate Nintendo's commercial shop catalog.
Shoplifting Channel proof-of-concept — before all the public chaos
Status: private proof-of-concept, not publicly released at the time.
In 2021, XFlak mentioned on GBATemp that he had a copy of the Shoplifting Channel by cwstjdenobs. He said fewer than half a dozen people had it and that it still worked in 2021. He posted proof-of-concept footage, but refused to share the binary.
Later, in 2024/2025 discussions, he repeated the reasons: ethics, not wanting to paint a target on himself, and not having the source code. He also clarified that it did not download WAD files directly; it downloaded files from NUS.
This matters because the Wii Shoplifting idea existed way before the later public release/drama. People already knew that a trick like this was possible. The difference is that the people who could do it generally did not want to release it.
That should have been a warning sign IMO...
The revival era
RiiShop / Rii Shop Channel
Status: shut down. Later attempts/second versions also moved away from being a serious revival.
RiiShop was the first big modern Wii Shop revival attempt to get real attention. From the outside, it looked exciting: the actual Wii Shop interface, public hype, people wanting to downloading WADs, and everyone wanting to believe the impossible final piece of Wii revival history was finally happening.
But from almost every later account, RiiShop had the classic problems:
[*] it was very slow;
[*] pages were only partly functional;
[*] title downloads did not work at all;
[*] the beta came out before the important parts were ready;
[*] the codebase was messy;
[*] and the project got way too much attention way too quickly.
Larsenv, who says he helped RiiShop in January 2024, later wrote on GBATemp that the code "was a mess," downloads were not working properly before the beta/public attention, and there was even an idea to let users buy Wii Points through PayPal. He says he told them that was a terrible idea, and they did not do it.
The security/privacy side is where the project became infamous. Public discussion says the source/database contained Wii serial numbers, IP-related info, and console nicknames. Larsenv later said that, when he rechecked the source, he found a small database with about 60 serial numbers associated with user-set nicknames. Serial numbers are not home addresses, obviously. But storing user data carelessly is exactly how a nostalgia project becomes a trust disaster.
Then came the allegation that followed Larsenv everywhere: a WiiLink announcement allegedly pinged over 20,000 people over the claim that he had used RiiShop data to dox people by showing serial numbers/IPs/console nicknames in a voice call. Larsenv denies being responsible and says there was no proof. The result was predictable: harassment, people repeating the claim long after the project died, old drama being dug up, and the truth getting buried under screenshots.
Gemdation's public blog describes it from the user/community side: people heard downloads were not working, then WiiLink's announcement set the server on fire, and RiiShop became a dead project plus a disappointment.
RiiShop became very known, and that was part of why its decline (and the WSC revival too) started. That matches the public story: hype arrived before the project was technically and socially ready.
My take: RiiShop probably would have failed even without the drama, because the technical foundation was not ready. But the drama turned a failed project into a community scar. It also poisoned every later revival. After RiiShop, every project had to answer the same questions: "Are you storing serials?" "Will downloads work?" "Is this safe?" "Who gets blamed when it collapses?"
New Shop Channel
Status: shut down.
New Shop Channel was one of the most confusing revivals because, from far away, it looked more organized: website, roadmap, translation work, Discord, social presence, people acting like it had a direction.
I worked on NSC as a translator for the Wii-only website. From both inside and outside, the main issue was simple: the project had more presentation than stable technical work.
The public GBATemp thread from June 17, 2024 already reads like a post-mortem. The OP said the thread, YouTube channel, Discord server, and website were deleted, so it looked cancelled "like RiiShop." Then the website reportedly changed to say the repositories were public. Then it changed again. Then people thought it was coming back. Then Fin's website changed to "I was lying, join Reviive."
Mixtape's post in that thread is still one of the best summaries of the pattern: the project was managed on Discord, used private repos, did not give a clear answer on DMCA/legal concerns, and then deleted signs of life when things went bad. If all your documentation and R&D live in a Discord server, one admin meltdown can erase everything.
The drama points were basically:
[*] the owner, TheWiiGuy, was criticized for not even doing real coding work;
[*] most actual progress was allegedly done by a few other people, especially Fin and another developer;
[*] there were arguments over ownership/control;
[*] at least one person was allegedly banned for calling out the owner's lack of coding skills;
[*] its code reportedly leaked;
[*] information was lacking and unclear;
[*] and at one point the project was supposedly revived for less than a day before being redirected toward Reviive.
Gemdation's blog adds even more: a poll comparing Fin and TheWiiGuy as potential better owners, a bad joke by a developer, staff pings announcing shutdown, and even announcement-channel permission mistakes that allowed messages to be deleted.
My take: NSC is the best example of a Wii Shop revival having all the aesthetics of a project and none of the infrastructure. Website? yes. Roadmap? yes. Discord? yes. Crowdin? yes. Stable backend, legal plan, public docs, adult project governance? What's that?
Reviive Shop Channel
Status: shut down. GitHub organization archived on September 14, 2024, with no public repositories visible now.
Reviive appeared after the NSC mess and was presented as another "this time it will work" attempt. In public GBATemp posts, Thom said Reviive had:
[*] a point system working;
[*] a login screen to avoid a serial leak like RiiShop;
[*] its own website;
[*] a Discord server;
[*] and a GitHub organization, although the actual code was private except for a README.
That already shows the two sides of Reviive. It knew the RiiShop privacy disaster mattered, but it still used private repositories and Discord-centered development.
Gemdation described Reviive as a successor to RiiShop that was "barely working" and not really available for private testing at that time. The blog also says the team was hostile, the leader mostly knew HTML, and the Discord had paranoia and useless pings about being spied on.
Public GBATemp comments add more accusations:
[*] banning developers involved in drama, then unbanning them and making them developers again;
[*] banning people for unclear reasons;
[*] accusations around stealing/changing credit or licensing from Open Shop Channel-related work;
[*] accusations of claiming others stole Reviive code;
[*] general hostility between staff;
[*] Fin said he planned to leave Reviive and shut down/replace his website work;
[*] the website still depended on infrastructure/passwords controlled by someone else;
[*] database credentials allegedly were not changed after a major staff conflict;
[*] Fin/Random allegedly deleted database/source material they had made;
[*] Reviive announced "technical difficulties" after data deletion;
[*] there were accusations that messages were edited when shown publicly;
[*] and the project had bans/alt accusations around the same mess.
My take: Reviive was another case where the public goal was technical, but the actual death was infrastructure. The team was trying to revive everything while apparently not handling passwords, roles, repos, or staff exits safely.
Gift Shop Channel
Status: dead / extremely obscure.
Gift Shop Channel is one of those tiny branches of the tree that most people missed. Gemdation says it was a short-lived Reviive revival/successor, with the name made in about five seconds. Barely anyone knew it existed because many people were banned, and it apparently got deleted after a meltdown.
There is not enough public information to treat Gift Shop as a serious standalone revival. It is more like a footnote in the Reviive/LaunchShop chaos.
LaunchShop
Status: dead.
LaunchShop is harder to document because a lot of it happened in Discord/private spaces and did not leave clean public sources.
It showed up publicly in the same Wii Shop revival war as Reviive, Gift Shop, and second RiiShop. Gemdation's January 2025 update says that after Gift Shop disappeared, LaunchShop was the only one left. Later, both LaunchShop and RiiShop's second attempt shut down. LaunchShop did not only have technical problems; it depended heavily on whether the few people doing real work still wanted to keep doing it.
My take: LaunchShop matters less for its technical output and more because it represents the post-Reviive fragmentation: projects splitting, renaming, fighting, accusing each other, and still not producing a stable public service.
RiiShop 2024 / second RiiShop
Status: dead.
After the first RiiShop collapse, there was a later RiiShop/RiiShop-2024 idea that shifted toward being a homebrew shop / Open Shop Channel alternative. Gemdation's poster/blog frames it pretty harshly: inactive, no real shop/website, and partly born from pettiness toward OSC.
The important line from Gemdation's update is that the second RiiShop eventually closed, "not even engaging with the idea of a Wii Shop revival anymore."
My take: once a project has already become a byword for security/drama, restarting under the same name is almost impossible unless the new team is dramatically more transparent. And of course that did not happen...
QubeWSC and other small/forgotten attempts
Status: inactive proof-of-concept / webpage only.
QubeWSC is a public GitHub repo described as a WIP Wii Shop Channel revival, but the description itself says it handles the webpage and nothing else. The repo was created in 2021, last pushed in 2021, and later only shows metadata activity.
This is worth mentioning because not every failed attempt was a giant drama. Some were just small experiments that never became full revivals.
The February 2025 GBATemp thread "E-shop revival - Wanna help?" is another example of the pattern repeating. The OP said they were thinking of a Wii Shop Channel revival, maybe hosting "the thing I cannot mention here" or maybe homebrew, and admitted they were not the best at programming but were good at HTML/CSS. That is basically the recurring Wii Shop revival starter kit at this point.
The ticket era
Wii Shoplifting Channel / WSLC
Status: released publicly in 2025, works in some sense, but dangerous and not a real revival.
The Shoplifting Channel idea finally became public in 2025. In my old version of this article I described it as released on March 2, 2025 by Larsenv, and as tricking Nintendo's servers into thinking you bought the requested game and are redownloading it.
That is why I do not consider it a Wii Shop revival. It does not rebuild the Wii Shop as a service. It abuses the remaining, half-working Nintendo ticket behavior.
The danger is the NAND/ticket side. Multiple GBATemp comments warned that it could break a Wii's NAND state or cause homebrew apps to fail. A later GBATemp comment corrected the technical description: both WSLC and Wii Like To Party use fake tickets so the shop thinks you purchased a title, then downloads title data from Nintendo's servers. It does not add the title to account history / "Titles You've Downloaded." He also called WSLC "actually just a bricker."
WiiLink created WiiUnShoplifter on GitHub in March 2025 with the description "Reverses the brick of a certain app," which says enough about how the community viewed it.
My take: this is historically interesting, but I would not recommend anyone use it. It touches NAND/tickets, and the cleanup tool existing is not a safety guarantee.
Wii Like To Party / WLTP
Status: reported working, but still fake tickets and not a revival.
Wii Like To Party is described as a fork/variant of the Shoplifting Channel idea. The key difference people reported is that it downloads the requested fake ticket directly instead of dumping a massive amount of tickets onto NAND.
That probably reduces one of WSLC's worst failure modes, but it does not change what the tool is: a ticket trick using Nintendo's servers, not a replacement shop service.
My take: safer-than-WSLC does not mean safe. It is still in the "do not treat this as a revival" category.
WiiMart — the one that actually became public and usable
WiiMart
Status: active as of 2026. The most complete public Wii Shop revival so far, but not drama-free and not risk-free.
WiiMart is the big one because it did what the earlier projects failed to do publicly: it got a Wii Shop-style service online with downloads working on real hardware.
Public timeline:
[*] GBATemp users started pointing to WiiMart around March 2025.
[*] The public GitHub repo WiiMart/WiiMart was created March 13, 2025.
[*] As of today, the site is still online, with WiiMart Wednesday updates and a one-year anniversary Q&A.
From the public site / README, WiiMart includes:
[*] original Wii Shop-style titles/pages;
[*] WiiWare and Virtual Console content;
[*] custom VC injects;
[*] patched/select channels;
[*] Wii Points as a database number, not real money;
[*] downloads and gifting;
[*] real-hardware support;
[*] partial Dolphin support, but downloads do not work there;
[*] and JSP/Jakarta Server Pages on the frontend.
The March 2026 Q&A is one of the best public technical summaries of WiiMart. It says:
[*] the Wii Shop Channel is basically a web app for the Wii Shop website;
[*] normal updates are server-side;
[*] domain changes require a new WAD;
[*] WiiMart had already gone through multiple domains, including oss-auth.blinklab.com, oss-auth.thecheese.io, and oss.thecheese.io:4444;
[*] WAD contents are stored in parts on the server;
[*] the UI is hosted on the server;
[*] icons were likely scraped from the original Wii Shop;
[*] Wii Points are just a number in the database;
[*] the server title file came from WiiShopChannel.net / MarioCube-derived data;
[*] homebrew was deliberately excluded because Open Shop Channel already handles that;
[*] and the team had been dealing with a "technical knowledge drought" and unreliable hosting.
That last line is important. WiiMart is the most successful public revival, but the team openly admitted that staffing/knowledge/hosting were weak points.
The current WiiMart site says the web server stores IP addresses and that Wii console serial numbers are stored so the owner can help consoles that need support.
My take: this is a perfect example of why transparency matters. Even if the data is not extremely sensitive, users should know before installing anything.
Publicly, WiiMart has had far less catastrophic drama than RiiShop/NSC/Reviive, but it has not been perfectly clean.
The public Q&A itself admits:
[*] unreliable hosting;
[*] a technical knowledge drought;
[*] missing/lost titles during server file incidents or migrations;
[*] domain moves requiring new WADs;
[*] and Dolphin support being difficult enough that a custom Dolphin build may never see release.
My take: WiiMart is the closest thing the public scene has had to a real working Wii Shop revival. It deserves credit for that. But it also proves that "downloads work" is only one part of a safe revival. You still need privacy, backups, secret rotation, clear ownership, support, non-Discord documentation, and people who know exactly what the software does to users' NAND.
The recurring drama pattern
After reading all this, the pattern is pretty obvious.
Most Wii Shop revival attempts did not fail because reviving the Wii Shop is "literally impossible." They failed because the teams combined a hard technical target with the worst possible project-management style.
The repeated problems:
[*] Private repos and Discord-only development. When things go wrong, there is no public knowledge base left.
[*] Owners who can manage a server but not the code. The people doing the real work get frustrated, then power struggles start.
[*] No clear legal plan. "Are you hosting copyrighted games?" should not be answered after launch.
[*] Bad security hygiene. Plaintext data, unchanged passwords, leaked credentials, unclear logging.
[*] No offboarding. If one dev leaves, the database/site should not become a hostage situation.
[*] No backups or incident response. A revival should survive one angry staff member.
[*] Too much hype too early. RiiShop showed what happens when a beta gets famous before downloads and security are solved.
The technical problems are hard, but the social problems killed more projects.
My current opinion
My old article ended with "please stop, stop for now." I still mostly agree, to be honest.
A Wii Shop revival is not automatically stupid. Preservation matters. The Wii Shop was a huge part of the Wii's identity. WiiWare and VC history should not disappear just because Nintendo closed purchases.
But a good revival needs boring adult infrastructure, not just passion:
[*] public documentation;
[*] public source where possible;
[*] clear legal boundaries;
[*] no paid points / no profiting from copyrighted content;
[*] exact privacy disclosure before install;
[*] hashing/minimizing serials if they are needed at all;
[*] backups;
[*] credential rotation;
[*] no shared bot/server tokens lying around;
[*] no Discord as the only archive;
[*] no "one owner with all power" setup;
[*] and no harassment campaigns when something breaks.
So my final take in 2026 is:
If a future team wants to do this properly, the first milestone should not be "show the Wii Shop menu." It should be: "can our project survive one staff member leaving, one token leaking, one server migration, one legal scare, and one angry GBATemp thread?"
If the answer is no, do not touch people's NAND.
Source trail / public references
These are the main public sources I used for this rewrite:
[*] Nintendo Support — Wii Shop Channel discontinuation: https://en-americas-support.nintend...a_id/27560/~/wii-shop-channel-discontinuation
[*] WiiBrew — Ticket documentation: https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Ticket
[*] GBATemp — Anyone working on a way to bring back the Wii Shop Channel: https://gbatemp.net/threads/anyone-working-on-a-way-to-bring-back-the-wii-shop-channel.581704/
[*] GBATemp — New Shop Channel cancelled: https://gbatemp.net/threads/new-sho...annel-revival-has-also-been-cancelled.657217/
[*] GBATemp — Every Wii Shop Channel revival has failed: https://gbatemp.net/threads/every-wii-shop-channel-revival-has-failed.660158/
[*] GBATemp — Wii Shop Channel in 2024?: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-shop-channel-in-2024.662062/
[*] GBATemp — E-shop revival - Wanna help?: https://gbatemp.net/threads/e-shop-revival-wanna-help.667203/
[*] Gemdation's website: https://gemdation.com/
[*] OpenShopChannel/WiiSOAP: https://github.com/OpenShopChannel/WiiSOAP
[*] OpenShopChannel/WSC-Web: https://github.com/OpenShopChannel/WSC-Web
[*] WiiLink24/WiiUnShoplifter: https://github.com/WiiLink24/WiiUnShoplifter
[*] Reviive Shop Channel GitHub org: https://github.com/Reviive-Shop-Channel
[*] WiiMart GitHub org: https://github.com/WiiMart
[*] WiiMart/WiiMart repo: https://github.com/WiiMart/WiiMart
[*] WiiMart.org: https://wiimart.org
(Long yap incoming. Also: please do not use this thread to harass anyone
)Last updated: 2026-07-27
Before starting: the original Wii Shop Channel isn't 100% dead. Nintendo removed the ability to make new purchases on January 30, 2019, but Nintendo's website still says that, "for the time being," users can redownload already-purchased content and transfer it to a Wii U. So when people say "revive the Wii Shop," they usually mean one of four different things:
[*] a real replacement for the original Wii Shop Channel, with title pages, points, tickets, downloads, etc.;
[*] a Wii Shop-looking frontend for homebrew;
[*] a ticket/NUS trick that makes Nintendo's old servers give you titles;
[*] or just a website/app that looks like the Wii Shop and downloads WADs from somewhere else.
Those are very different projects fyi.
But why is reviving the Wii Shop Channel so hard? The other channels were revived and work just fine! Just look at all of the Japanese exclu-
No. Because the Wii Shop Channel is NOT just a web page with music. It's an Opera-powered frontend talking to Nintendo's (bad) servers. The annoying parts are things like:
[*] finding and/or recreating the original HTML pages;
[*] SSL and certificate patching;
[*] IAS/ECS/CAS/shop server behavior;
[*] SOAP responses;
[*] tickets;
[*] title metadata;
[*] points, account history, and gifting;
[*] and installing things to NAND (possibly without bricking people's Wiis???)
The ticket part matters a lot. WiiBrew documents that Wii titles are available on the NUS, but most non-system titles are encrypted with a title key found in a ticket. Tickets live on the NAND, and Wii Shop purchases are basically tied to them. That is why "just download it from the NUS" is not enough. It is also why fake-ticket tools can become dangerous very quickly.
So the scene always had two big problems:
1. Technical difficulty: you need people who actually understand Wii Shop internals, not just basic HTML and CSS.
2. Legal/social risk: if a project serves official WiiWare/VC content, it becomes a piracy project in practice. That brings Nintendo risk, community backlash, drama, and everything else included with the starter pack. But now, let's get to the juicy part!!
Open Shop Channel / WiiSOAP / WSC-Web — the homebrew route
Status: alive-ish / slow / homebrew-only
This is the one that should not be thrown in the same pile alongside random Wii Shop revivals
Open Shop Channel has public GitHub repositories related to using the Wii Shop Channel as a frontend:
[*] WiiSOAP was created in 2019. Its README describes it as a Wii Shop Channel SOAP server for the ECommerce library, aiming to handle tickets, authentication, and shop behavior.
[*] WSC-Web was created in 2020. Its README says it is the frontend loaded through the Wii Shop Channel's embedded Opera browser, acting as a catalog for OSC's homebrew database.
The important part: OSC's approach is a homebrew catalog, not "free WiiWare/VC." That is why people keep bringing it up whenever Wii Shop revival drama happens. It is the safer idea: use the nostalgic shop interface for homebrew, avoid Nintendo's content, and document things publicly.
In 2024, people on GBATemp still described OSC's WSC frontend as private/Patreon-access/slow, but also as something that actually existed and was "not half bad." It is not the same category as RiiShop/Reviive/WiiMart, because it is not trying to recreate Nintendo's commercial shop catalog.
Shoplifting Channel proof-of-concept — before all the public chaos
Status: private proof-of-concept, not publicly released at the time.
In 2021, XFlak mentioned on GBATemp that he had a copy of the Shoplifting Channel by cwstjdenobs. He said fewer than half a dozen people had it and that it still worked in 2021. He posted proof-of-concept footage, but refused to share the binary.
Later, in 2024/2025 discussions, he repeated the reasons: ethics, not wanting to paint a target on himself, and not having the source code. He also clarified that it did not download WAD files directly; it downloaded files from NUS.
This matters because the Wii Shoplifting idea existed way before the later public release/drama. People already knew that a trick like this was possible. The difference is that the people who could do it generally did not want to release it.
That should have been a warning sign IMO...
The revival era
RiiShop / Rii Shop Channel
Status: shut down. Later attempts/second versions also moved away from being a serious revival.
RiiShop was the first big modern Wii Shop revival attempt to get real attention. From the outside, it looked exciting: the actual Wii Shop interface, public hype, people wanting to downloading WADs, and everyone wanting to believe the impossible final piece of Wii revival history was finally happening.
But from almost every later account, RiiShop had the classic problems:
[*] it was very slow;
[*] pages were only partly functional;
[*] title downloads did not work at all;
[*] the beta came out before the important parts were ready;
[*] the codebase was messy;
[*] and the project got way too much attention way too quickly.
Larsenv, who says he helped RiiShop in January 2024, later wrote on GBATemp that the code "was a mess," downloads were not working properly before the beta/public attention, and there was even an idea to let users buy Wii Points through PayPal. He says he told them that was a terrible idea, and they did not do it.
The security/privacy side is where the project became infamous. Public discussion says the source/database contained Wii serial numbers, IP-related info, and console nicknames. Larsenv later said that, when he rechecked the source, he found a small database with about 60 serial numbers associated with user-set nicknames. Serial numbers are not home addresses, obviously. But storing user data carelessly is exactly how a nostalgia project becomes a trust disaster.
Then came the allegation that followed Larsenv everywhere: a WiiLink announcement allegedly pinged over 20,000 people over the claim that he had used RiiShop data to dox people by showing serial numbers/IPs/console nicknames in a voice call. Larsenv denies being responsible and says there was no proof. The result was predictable: harassment, people repeating the claim long after the project died, old drama being dug up, and the truth getting buried under screenshots.
Gemdation's public blog describes it from the user/community side: people heard downloads were not working, then WiiLink's announcement set the server on fire, and RiiShop became a dead project plus a disappointment.
RiiShop became very known, and that was part of why its decline (and the WSC revival too) started. That matches the public story: hype arrived before the project was technically and socially ready.
My take: RiiShop probably would have failed even without the drama, because the technical foundation was not ready. But the drama turned a failed project into a community scar. It also poisoned every later revival. After RiiShop, every project had to answer the same questions: "Are you storing serials?" "Will downloads work?" "Is this safe?" "Who gets blamed when it collapses?"
New Shop Channel
Status: shut down.
New Shop Channel was one of the most confusing revivals because, from far away, it looked more organized: website, roadmap, translation work, Discord, social presence, people acting like it had a direction.
I worked on NSC as a translator for the Wii-only website. From both inside and outside, the main issue was simple: the project had more presentation than stable technical work.
The public GBATemp thread from June 17, 2024 already reads like a post-mortem. The OP said the thread, YouTube channel, Discord server, and website were deleted, so it looked cancelled "like RiiShop." Then the website reportedly changed to say the repositories were public. Then it changed again. Then people thought it was coming back. Then Fin's website changed to "I was lying, join Reviive."
Mixtape's post in that thread is still one of the best summaries of the pattern: the project was managed on Discord, used private repos, did not give a clear answer on DMCA/legal concerns, and then deleted signs of life when things went bad. If all your documentation and R&D live in a Discord server, one admin meltdown can erase everything.
The drama points were basically:
[*] the owner, TheWiiGuy, was criticized for not even doing real coding work;
[*] most actual progress was allegedly done by a few other people, especially Fin and another developer;
[*] there were arguments over ownership/control;
[*] at least one person was allegedly banned for calling out the owner's lack of coding skills;
[*] its code reportedly leaked;
[*] information was lacking and unclear;
[*] and at one point the project was supposedly revived for less than a day before being redirected toward Reviive.
Gemdation's blog adds even more: a poll comparing Fin and TheWiiGuy as potential better owners, a bad joke by a developer, staff pings announcing shutdown, and even announcement-channel permission mistakes that allowed messages to be deleted.
My take: NSC is the best example of a Wii Shop revival having all the aesthetics of a project and none of the infrastructure. Website? yes. Roadmap? yes. Discord? yes. Crowdin? yes. Stable backend, legal plan, public docs, adult project governance? What's that?
Reviive Shop Channel
Status: shut down. GitHub organization archived on September 14, 2024, with no public repositories visible now.
Reviive appeared after the NSC mess and was presented as another "this time it will work" attempt. In public GBATemp posts, Thom said Reviive had:
[*] a point system working;
[*] a login screen to avoid a serial leak like RiiShop;
[*] its own website;
[*] a Discord server;
[*] and a GitHub organization, although the actual code was private except for a README.
That already shows the two sides of Reviive. It knew the RiiShop privacy disaster mattered, but it still used private repositories and Discord-centered development.
Gemdation described Reviive as a successor to RiiShop that was "barely working" and not really available for private testing at that time. The blog also says the team was hostile, the leader mostly knew HTML, and the Discord had paranoia and useless pings about being spied on.
Public GBATemp comments add more accusations:
[*] banning developers involved in drama, then unbanning them and making them developers again;
[*] banning people for unclear reasons;
[*] accusations around stealing/changing credit or licensing from Open Shop Channel-related work;
[*] accusations of claiming others stole Reviive code;
[*] general hostility between staff;
[*] Fin said he planned to leave Reviive and shut down/replace his website work;
[*] the website still depended on infrastructure/passwords controlled by someone else;
[*] database credentials allegedly were not changed after a major staff conflict;
[*] Fin/Random allegedly deleted database/source material they had made;
[*] Reviive announced "technical difficulties" after data deletion;
[*] there were accusations that messages were edited when shown publicly;
[*] and the project had bans/alt accusations around the same mess.
My take: Reviive was another case where the public goal was technical, but the actual death was infrastructure. The team was trying to revive everything while apparently not handling passwords, roles, repos, or staff exits safely.
Gift Shop Channel
Status: dead / extremely obscure.
Gift Shop Channel is one of those tiny branches of the tree that most people missed. Gemdation says it was a short-lived Reviive revival/successor, with the name made in about five seconds. Barely anyone knew it existed because many people were banned, and it apparently got deleted after a meltdown.
There is not enough public information to treat Gift Shop as a serious standalone revival. It is more like a footnote in the Reviive/LaunchShop chaos.
LaunchShop
Status: dead.
LaunchShop is harder to document because a lot of it happened in Discord/private spaces and did not leave clean public sources.
It showed up publicly in the same Wii Shop revival war as Reviive, Gift Shop, and second RiiShop. Gemdation's January 2025 update says that after Gift Shop disappeared, LaunchShop was the only one left. Later, both LaunchShop and RiiShop's second attempt shut down. LaunchShop did not only have technical problems; it depended heavily on whether the few people doing real work still wanted to keep doing it.
My take: LaunchShop matters less for its technical output and more because it represents the post-Reviive fragmentation: projects splitting, renaming, fighting, accusing each other, and still not producing a stable public service.
RiiShop 2024 / second RiiShop
Status: dead.
After the first RiiShop collapse, there was a later RiiShop/RiiShop-2024 idea that shifted toward being a homebrew shop / Open Shop Channel alternative. Gemdation's poster/blog frames it pretty harshly: inactive, no real shop/website, and partly born from pettiness toward OSC.
The important line from Gemdation's update is that the second RiiShop eventually closed, "not even engaging with the idea of a Wii Shop revival anymore."
My take: once a project has already become a byword for security/drama, restarting under the same name is almost impossible unless the new team is dramatically more transparent. And of course that did not happen...
QubeWSC and other small/forgotten attempts
Status: inactive proof-of-concept / webpage only.
QubeWSC is a public GitHub repo described as a WIP Wii Shop Channel revival, but the description itself says it handles the webpage and nothing else. The repo was created in 2021, last pushed in 2021, and later only shows metadata activity.
This is worth mentioning because not every failed attempt was a giant drama. Some were just small experiments that never became full revivals.
The February 2025 GBATemp thread "E-shop revival - Wanna help?" is another example of the pattern repeating. The OP said they were thinking of a Wii Shop Channel revival, maybe hosting "the thing I cannot mention here" or maybe homebrew, and admitted they were not the best at programming but were good at HTML/CSS. That is basically the recurring Wii Shop revival starter kit at this point.
The ticket era
Wii Shoplifting Channel / WSLC
Status: released publicly in 2025, works in some sense, but dangerous and not a real revival.
The Shoplifting Channel idea finally became public in 2025. In my old version of this article I described it as released on March 2, 2025 by Larsenv, and as tricking Nintendo's servers into thinking you bought the requested game and are redownloading it.
That is why I do not consider it a Wii Shop revival. It does not rebuild the Wii Shop as a service. It abuses the remaining, half-working Nintendo ticket behavior.
The danger is the NAND/ticket side. Multiple GBATemp comments warned that it could break a Wii's NAND state or cause homebrew apps to fail. A later GBATemp comment corrected the technical description: both WSLC and Wii Like To Party use fake tickets so the shop thinks you purchased a title, then downloads title data from Nintendo's servers. It does not add the title to account history / "Titles You've Downloaded." He also called WSLC "actually just a bricker."
WiiLink created WiiUnShoplifter on GitHub in March 2025 with the description "Reverses the brick of a certain app," which says enough about how the community viewed it.
My take: this is historically interesting, but I would not recommend anyone use it. It touches NAND/tickets, and the cleanup tool existing is not a safety guarantee.
Wii Like To Party / WLTP
Status: reported working, but still fake tickets and not a revival.
Wii Like To Party is described as a fork/variant of the Shoplifting Channel idea. The key difference people reported is that it downloads the requested fake ticket directly instead of dumping a massive amount of tickets onto NAND.
That probably reduces one of WSLC's worst failure modes, but it does not change what the tool is: a ticket trick using Nintendo's servers, not a replacement shop service.
My take: safer-than-WSLC does not mean safe. It is still in the "do not treat this as a revival" category.
WiiMart — the one that actually became public and usable
WiiMart
Status: active as of 2026. The most complete public Wii Shop revival so far, but not drama-free and not risk-free.
WiiMart is the big one because it did what the earlier projects failed to do publicly: it got a Wii Shop-style service online with downloads working on real hardware.
Public timeline:
[*] GBATemp users started pointing to WiiMart around March 2025.
[*] The public GitHub repo WiiMart/WiiMart was created March 13, 2025.
[*] As of today, the site is still online, with WiiMart Wednesday updates and a one-year anniversary Q&A.
From the public site / README, WiiMart includes:
[*] original Wii Shop-style titles/pages;
[*] WiiWare and Virtual Console content;
[*] custom VC injects;
[*] patched/select channels;
[*] Wii Points as a database number, not real money;
[*] downloads and gifting;
[*] real-hardware support;
[*] partial Dolphin support, but downloads do not work there;
[*] and JSP/Jakarta Server Pages on the frontend.
The March 2026 Q&A is one of the best public technical summaries of WiiMart. It says:
[*] the Wii Shop Channel is basically a web app for the Wii Shop website;
[*] normal updates are server-side;
[*] domain changes require a new WAD;
[*] WiiMart had already gone through multiple domains, including oss-auth.blinklab.com, oss-auth.thecheese.io, and oss.thecheese.io:4444;
[*] WAD contents are stored in parts on the server;
[*] the UI is hosted on the server;
[*] icons were likely scraped from the original Wii Shop;
[*] Wii Points are just a number in the database;
[*] the server title file came from WiiShopChannel.net / MarioCube-derived data;
[*] homebrew was deliberately excluded because Open Shop Channel already handles that;
[*] and the team had been dealing with a "technical knowledge drought" and unreliable hosting.
That last line is important. WiiMart is the most successful public revival, but the team openly admitted that staffing/knowledge/hosting were weak points.
The current WiiMart site says the web server stores IP addresses and that Wii console serial numbers are stored so the owner can help consoles that need support.
My take: this is a perfect example of why transparency matters. Even if the data is not extremely sensitive, users should know before installing anything.
Publicly, WiiMart has had far less catastrophic drama than RiiShop/NSC/Reviive, but it has not been perfectly clean.
The public Q&A itself admits:
[*] unreliable hosting;
[*] a technical knowledge drought;
[*] missing/lost titles during server file incidents or migrations;
[*] domain moves requiring new WADs;
[*] and Dolphin support being difficult enough that a custom Dolphin build may never see release.
My take: WiiMart is the closest thing the public scene has had to a real working Wii Shop revival. It deserves credit for that. But it also proves that "downloads work" is only one part of a safe revival. You still need privacy, backups, secret rotation, clear ownership, support, non-Discord documentation, and people who know exactly what the software does to users' NAND.
The recurring drama pattern
After reading all this, the pattern is pretty obvious.
Most Wii Shop revival attempts did not fail because reviving the Wii Shop is "literally impossible." They failed because the teams combined a hard technical target with the worst possible project-management style.
The repeated problems:
[*] Private repos and Discord-only development. When things go wrong, there is no public knowledge base left.
[*] Owners who can manage a server but not the code. The people doing the real work get frustrated, then power struggles start.
[*] No clear legal plan. "Are you hosting copyrighted games?" should not be answered after launch.
[*] Bad security hygiene. Plaintext data, unchanged passwords, leaked credentials, unclear logging.
[*] No offboarding. If one dev leaves, the database/site should not become a hostage situation.
[*] No backups or incident response. A revival should survive one angry staff member.
[*] Too much hype too early. RiiShop showed what happens when a beta gets famous before downloads and security are solved.
The technical problems are hard, but the social problems killed more projects.
My current opinion
My old article ended with "please stop, stop for now." I still mostly agree, to be honest.
A Wii Shop revival is not automatically stupid. Preservation matters. The Wii Shop was a huge part of the Wii's identity. WiiWare and VC history should not disappear just because Nintendo closed purchases.
But a good revival needs boring adult infrastructure, not just passion:
[*] public documentation;
[*] public source where possible;
[*] clear legal boundaries;
[*] no paid points / no profiting from copyrighted content;
[*] exact privacy disclosure before install;
[*] hashing/minimizing serials if they are needed at all;
[*] backups;
[*] credential rotation;
[*] no shared bot/server tokens lying around;
[*] no Discord as the only archive;
[*] no "one owner with all power" setup;
[*] and no harassment campaigns when something breaks.
So my final take in 2026 is:
If a future team wants to do this properly, the first milestone should not be "show the Wii Shop menu." It should be: "can our project survive one staff member leaving, one token leaking, one server migration, one legal scare, and one angry GBATemp thread?"
If the answer is no, do not touch people's NAND.
Source trail / public references
These are the main public sources I used for this rewrite:
[*] Nintendo Support — Wii Shop Channel discontinuation: https://en-americas-support.nintend...a_id/27560/~/wii-shop-channel-discontinuation
[*] WiiBrew — Ticket documentation: https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Ticket
[*] GBATemp — Anyone working on a way to bring back the Wii Shop Channel: https://gbatemp.net/threads/anyone-working-on-a-way-to-bring-back-the-wii-shop-channel.581704/
[*] GBATemp — New Shop Channel cancelled: https://gbatemp.net/threads/new-sho...annel-revival-has-also-been-cancelled.657217/
[*] GBATemp — Every Wii Shop Channel revival has failed: https://gbatemp.net/threads/every-wii-shop-channel-revival-has-failed.660158/
[*] GBATemp — Wii Shop Channel in 2024?: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-shop-channel-in-2024.662062/
[*] GBATemp — E-shop revival - Wanna help?: https://gbatemp.net/threads/e-shop-revival-wanna-help.667203/
[*] Gemdation's website: https://gemdation.com/
[*] OpenShopChannel/WiiSOAP: https://github.com/OpenShopChannel/WiiSOAP
[*] OpenShopChannel/WSC-Web: https://github.com/OpenShopChannel/WSC-Web
[*] WiiLink24/WiiUnShoplifter: https://github.com/WiiLink24/WiiUnShoplifter
[*] Reviive Shop Channel GitHub org: https://github.com/Reviive-Shop-Channel
[*] WiiMart GitHub org: https://github.com/WiiMart
[*] WiiMart/WiiMart repo: https://github.com/WiiMart/WiiMart
[*] WiiMart.org: https://wiimart.org
Last edited by LNLenost,
