It was short but sweet. Anyone who has purchased Datel‘s Freeloader for Wii will soon find the latest Wii firmware update 3.3 from Nintendo will actively cause Freeloader to cease functioning.

Reports came flooding into Kotaku of the recent update assuredly when those trapped in the PAL nether regions (also known as Australia and Europe) attempted to use their only route possible to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl while we all still wait for a release.

Datel’s Freeloader is a soft boot disc that runs at the Wii menu screen unlocking region protection for overseas games. This means you can import games from all over the globe for your Wii and with Freeloader, they’ll work. Naturally the lack of PAL Brawl was a big driving force for the release and many purchases of Freeloader and with swift action from Nintendo many have been left now not only with no Brawl, but a potentially redundant purchase of Freeloader.

Not only will all those who bought Freeloader just for Brawl suffer, Datel will now have their product completely invalidated; harsh consequences from Nintendo but Datel should have known they were treading risky waters and Nintendo are well within their rights to block it.