Little Big Planet 3’s online component is officially gone for good, or at least “indefinitely,” though it’s almost a sure bet in this case there’s no distinguishing the two.
Back in January, Little Big Planet servers for the original three titles were taken offline, though only the PS3 version of the third, due to repeated DDOS attacks. At the time, Sony called the action a way to “protect” players, while keeping games 1-3 alive on the PS4 version of LBP 3.
On Friday however, Sony confirmed it would also be taking down servers for the PS4 version of Little Big Planet 3.
Originally spotted by DelistedGames, Sony released a statement regarding the situation on its website, rather coldly stating the facts that every online creation not saved locally on a console from Little Big Planet 1-3, is officially gone.
“Due to ongoing technical issues which resulted in the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers for PS4 being taken offline temporarily in January 2024, the decision has been made to keep the servers offline indefinitely.
All online services including access to other players’ creations for LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer available. User generated content (UGC) stored locally on your PS4 will remain available. Any new UGC you create can be played on your PS4 but not shared. Offline features such as the campaign will remain playable.”
The worst of it, as DelistedGames points out, is that players didn’t exactly have a chance any creations they didn’t have saved to their console.
To say it’s unfortunate that these levels are all now lost to the world is an understatement. Not to mention that it also feels like a cruel ending for a franchise that was founded on giving players a way to create and share their own designs for levels, and eventually entire games.
Turning off servers after a certain time, even without there being issues is common place in the industry.
But when so many games exist almost entirely online, or a huge part of what makes them a complete package, as is the case with LBP exists online, it becomes clear that this approach is simply not working.
At the very least when it comes to user-generated content, those users should be given an official chance to save what they’ve made, while others should have the chance to save their favourite creations they’ve found over the years.
Though, due to the semantics of the statement, it is only barely worth pointing out that there’s nothing stopping Sony from continuing to work on the servers, bringing them back to allow everyone to save what they want, and deciding from there to keep them going or shut down because Sony would just rather not pay the fees anymore.
Source – [Sony via DelistedGames]