No matter how much a company may try to prevent it, eventually every piece of hardware gets cracked, hacked or “jailbroken”. Nintendo knows this quite well, since both their Nintendo DS and Wii consoles were saddled with such exploits. Recently, the 3DS was added to the list of circumvented hardware when a workaround involving an obscure puzzler by the name of “Cubic Ninja” was discovered.
Nintendo’s response? Remove the digital copy from the eShop store. Though the game’s digital version was only available in Japan, it seems to have affected the western market as well, since the boxed game’s asking price on ebay has shot up in response to the delisting.
This situation is reminiscent of Sony’s temporary removal of Persona 2 when it was discovered that game also possessed such an exploit.
In the end, this is good news for owners of the boxed copy. If you need Christmas money, you could always sell the game on the open market due to the temporarily increased demand.