Hundreds or even thousands of 3DS gamers are finding themselves banned today, loading up their handhelds and receiving error code 002-0102 when trying to access certain features. The bans seem focused around modded and jailbroken 3DS handhelds, though no one in that community has quite figured out the exact cause of the bans.
Some say it is only if you pirated games, others have been banned without any piracy. Some theories focus on certain titles, such as the recently released Fire Emblem Echoes, but no one is sure if that’s the definite reason for the bans. Whatever Nintendo used to detect these modders and decide that they were worthy of a ban isn’t known, but we do know that it was a lot of 3DSes and they’re all getting error code 002-0102 when trying to hop online.
The eShop and browser work fine, but other apps, such as Friends, YouTube, and online multiplayer simply won’t work, instead giving the 002-0102 error. The idea seems to be to lock out these users from others. Even Pokemon Bank is inaccessible, which has caused a lot of frustration for those who have stored all of their Pokemon on the online service.
Modding your 3DS does go against the terms of service, and pirating games is even worse. Still, the 3DS modding scene had grown quite large as of late, and Nintendo had seemed to turn a blind eye toward most of their activities. The Pokemon games almost rely on “cheating” for many of the professional level events.
As of now, no one knows if the 002-0102 bans are permanent. Those who have called Nintendo support have gotten mixed messages. If you are receiving this error and have definitely done nothing wrong then you can contact Nintendo support right here and try to get your console un-banned.
