LittleBigPlanet 3's servers, which have been temporarily down since January 2024, will now be kept offline indefinitely.

[Cipherr]

Can't believe how Sony mishandled this franchise.

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Deserved more honestly. Deserved so much more. I swear to god seeing that demo stage of the first LBP at that GDC all those years ago is a serious gaming 'Core Memory' for me. They nailed the presentation of that, I was rabid in my anticipation of it. What a reveal man. I lost it at the jetpacks and the skateboard. Just amazingly creative game design at a time that I was feeling overwhelmed by brown shooters and everything being first person.

 

[Kalentan]

This is fucking insane. So now there is no way to play community levels in any of the LBP games? The games literally designed to be mostly about that???

Wtf!!

 

[UglySofaGaming]

Inevitable. There's no long term plan or guarantee for these platforms.

It'll happen to Dreams one day and hundreds of thousands of hours of work will be lost forever.

 

[crazillo]

Very disappointing news. It's 15 years of user generated content wiped away just like that. Really sucks.

I hoped for a PC port of Dreams, because I thought community servers would become a thing then if Sony ever pulled the plug.

 

[Clive]

The background is almost certainly that people were getting suspended for PSN from playing the game. Probably due to moderation somehow being taken over by hackers.

Breaking: 2024 LBP Server Shutdown, Moderation Issues - LBP Union

The LittleBigPlanet servers have been brought offline following a string of false PSN bans. This is a developing story that will be updated.

www.lbpunion.com

And indefinitely doesn't necessarily mean permanently. It definitely means there is no easy fix though.

 

[amara]

Someone did archive around 6k creations making them playable through RPCS3. Though I'm assuming that's about millions short of all of them

Home

Welcome to the LittleBigPlanet Archive! This site is a resource dedicated to preservation and reverse-engineering. LBP, Modnation, Soundshapes, etc.

littlebigarchive.com

 

[Mass Effect]

Someone did archive around 6k creations making them playable through RPCS3. Though I'm assuming that's about millions short of all them

Home

Welcome to the LittleBigPlanet Archive! This site is a resource dedicated to preservation and reverse-engineering. LBP, Modnation, Soundshapes, etc.

littlebigarchive.com

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I was about to ask about this. Good to hear there are at least some preservation efforts.

 

[sir_crocodile]

Close if old.

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They already did. :/

 

[NativeTongue]

Terrible game. I wish MM never gave it away

 

[Kitschy Kitty]

Deserved more honestly. Deserved so much more. I swear to god seeing that demo stage of the first LBP at that GDC all those years ago is a serious gaming 'Core Memory' for me. They nailed the presentation of that, I was rabid in my anticipation of it. What a reveal man. I lost it at the jetpacks and the skateboard. Just amazingly creative game design at a time that I was feeling overwhelmed by brown shooters and everything being first person.

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I mean it did deserve more, but it basically got as many entries as Uncharted.

 

[SixelAlexiS]

The background is almost certainly that people were getting suspended for PSN from playing the game. Probably due to moderation somehow being taken over by hackers.

Breaking: 2024 LBP Server Shutdown, Moderation Issues - LBP Union

The LittleBigPlanet servers have been brought offline following a string of false PSN bans. This is a developing story that will be updated.

www.lbpunion.com

And indefinitely doesn't necessarily mean permanently. It definitely means there is no easy fix though.

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How much of a failure you have to be to hack LBP servers... of all games out there... jeez go hack that shitshow of Roblox if you have to, what LBP has ever done to deserve this :/

 

[dose]

That wasn't a mystery, it was a DDOS attack that exploited a vulnerability. They were unable to fix it server side and it needed a client side patch, which LBP3 on PS4 got, but since PS3 game patches are no longer possible to make they could not fix LBP1/2/3 on PS3.

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Why are PS3 patches no longer possible?

 

[Tea-Stance]

This really emphasizes the fact that we need a new LBP game on the PS5. I mean, there's got to be money to make there, right?

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It would have to be free and multiplat to be worthit these days. Not to mention competing with the likes of Roblox and Minecraft.

Werent sales from LBP DLC also keeping Media Molecule afloat during their bad years lol? So since this will probably dry out completely now I cant see this Studio survive 2024

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Seeing that they were nearly closed in the recent layoffs I don't have the highest of hopes for their future.

 

[Dhruvenator]

Really disappointed - damn. Love me all of lbp

 

[LossAversion]

Sony and shutting down servers. Name a more iconic duo.

 

[JigglesBunny]

This is scummy shit. Every LBP user creation gone forever, dust in the wind.

 

[ShapeGSX]

Sony's operating system and network are held together with baling wire and duct tape so it's not surprising that they couldn't solve this. Still a shitty thing to do.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

You gotta be kidding me. i didn't even play the game fully eventhough I had it for quite some time. I didn't even know the serevrs were down especially for PS4. I thought it was for PS3. SO no way we can play the aamzing creations of others?

This is scummy shit. Every LBP user creation gone forever, dust in the wind.

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That is why I neevr ever trust anything Sony that has any scent of online co:mponents cus they can't maintain shit online. They even couldn't even manage their own online branch of games and SOE and sold it.

 

[Ouroboros]

boy got sacked.

 

[MrHealthy]

Why are PS3 patches no longer possible?

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Development tools, the QA pipeline, and staff to actually push a patch live no longer exist.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

LMAO reading the graveyard link I didn't even know flOw and Bound servers were shat down.

Edit: Here They Lie and Hohokum too???

Dear devs who work with Sony, NEVER LET THEM RUN YOUR SERVERS!!!!!!! EVER.

 

[lori]

that's a lot of player created content permanently lost to time. has there been any preservation effort? is it even possible now?

 

[GamingHobbyist]

There were truly fantastic user made content potentially forever lost. It's really sad. As much as I enjoyed Dreams as a product I think making a game within the confines of LBP inspired more creativity. Just super disappointing and really unhappy with how PlayStation has handled both LBP and Dreams.

 

[Ingueferroque]

This is sad.

LMAO reading the graveyard link I didn't even know flOw and Bound servers were shat down.

Edit: Here They Lie and Hohokum too???

Dear devs who work with Sony, NEVER LET THEM RUN YOUR SERVERS!!!!!!! EVER.

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Do you remember what online functionality Hohokum had? I just remember it as a single player game.

 

[Tyranitar]

It sucks that they yanked the servers but how exactly are they supposed to fix the vulnerability? It doesn't make sense to throw a bunch of cash at pushing PS3 patches to fix vulnerabilities for games few people are playing anymore.

It really does suck to see all that user-created content gone to the void, but if they still have the resource servers then maybe they'll find a way to port LBP or bring the content to PS5 and/or PC someday. It's doubtful, but I'm not sure what else anyone expects. Patching the vulnerability sounds simple but it's likely more complex than anyone seems to think, and the few months they took to determine that probably does indicate somebody there tried to do something about it.

 

[taichibx]

Fuck the hackers that ruined this series. The community is nothing but good vibes and goofing around, only a major douche would target this series

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What do you mean by "hackers that ruined this series"? It's Sony's fault to keep vulnerable servers online and giving up on fixing the issues.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

This is sad.



Do you remember what online functionality Hohokum had? I just remember it as a single player game.

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I forgot tbh, just like Here They Lie too. I remember Flow had multiplayer with opponents hitting you and journey brings a random player to cooperate with that you communicate with by just signs like jumping which was amazing and enigmatic. I ope they didn't kill Journey servers.

 

[Ingueferroque]

I forgot tbh, just like Here They Lie too. I remember Flow had multiplayer with opponents hitting you and journey brings a random player to cooperate with that you communicate with by just signs like jumping which was amazing and enigmatic. I ope they didn't kill Journey servers.

Click to shrink...

Journey is still very much alive, at least on PC. I was playing it a few days ago - but those servers are probably maintained by Annapurna.

 

[LumberPanda]

Damn I fucking loved LittleBigPlanet. Only reason I stopped playing LBP2 was I moved away for Uni and didn't take the family PS3 with me or get my own.

 

[Twister]

This generation has completely demolished any goodwill Sony had built with me last generation. It's L after L after L

 

[NukeRunner]

What do you mean by "hackers that ruined this series"? It's Sony's fault to keep vulnerable servers online and giving up on fixing the issues.

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Interesting logic, the attacker is fine because the defense wasn't good enough.

 

[Digital Dinosaur]

The decay of LBP is genuinely sad. The series swooped in and gave the PS3 an identity and energy when it was floundering early on.

 

[dose]

Development tools, the QA pipeline, and staff to actually push a patch live no longer exist.

Click to shrink...

Development tools don't suddenly disappear, they're still around. Plus this is a Sony product, if they actually give a shit they're more than capable of sorting out the QA side of things and pushing a patch out for it.

 

[NinjaLooter]

Sony's action his gen have been a complete disappointment. Fuck Sony.

 

[Mecha Meister]

This is heartbreaking, this game series changed my life, LittleBigPlanet 2 is the best game ever made to me, it granted me the ability to express my creativity with its extensive and advanced creation tools, as well as enjoy the many incredible experiences the community had created.

LittleBigPlanet 3 further evolved the exceptional experience LBP provided by further enhancing these tools, the game also maintained compatibility with the User Generated Content created on the PlayStation 3 versions of LittleBigPlanet, this allowed players to access them on the PlayStation 4 version of LittleBigPlanet 3. The game was a technical marvel.

This game series was my beacon of light in times of depression, and helped introduce me to the world of computer science and game development.

I will never forget this game.

 

[MrHealthy]

Development tools don't suddenly disappear, they're still around. Plus this is a Sony product, if they actually give a shit they're more than capable of sorting out the QA side of things and pushing a patch out for it.

Click to shrink...

While the dev side software certainly still exists they can't be used in an official capacity without hooking into Sony's PS3 development network for deployment. Sorting out the QA side of things isn't just assigning some employees and getting it done. It's spinning up decade old hardware and software to run it through QA. That is assuming that they still have that hardware / software (and that it works with their current systems) at all. But odds are they don't because why would they keep something like that when game development officially ended years ago. So they would have to rebuild it from scratch to get it done.

Sure it could be done, just like how anything humans have done before could be repeated if someone really wanted to. But it would cost an absurd amount of money to set up PS3 patching again to deploy three patches to three decade+ old games. The reality is that things break, and while technically they could be fixed, the tools to fix them also need fixing and that just doesn't make sense.

The prudent thing to do if Sony actually cares about the IP preserving the user made content would be to resurrect the cancelled free to play LittleBigPlanet Hub in some capacity.

 

[TheChrisGlass]

It sucks that they yanked the servers but how exactly are they supposed to fix the vulnerability? It doesn't make sense to throw a bunch of cash at pushing PS3 patches to fix vulnerabilities for games few people are playing anymore.

It really does suck to see all that user-created content gone to the void, but if they still have the resource servers then maybe they'll find a way to port LBP or bring the content to PS5 and/or PC someday. It's doubtful, but I'm not sure what else anyone expects. Patching the vulnerability sounds simple but it's likely more complex than anyone seems to think, and the few months they took to determine that probably does indicate somebody there tried to do something about it.

Click to shrink...

It's never just for the MAU, but brand reputation. If you know it'll die like this, you're 100x more likely not to ever consider LBP4.
They don't care for the long game.

 

[Jon God]

I hate everything to do with this.

That being said, why are so many folks here ignoring the fact that this wasn't Sony deciding one day to close the server for laughs, hackers are directly responsible for killing all LittleBigPlanet servers by displaying hate speech, forcing the system to detect wrongdoers completely wrong as to ban innocent people, DDOSing, and so on.

You can blame Sony, but it's likely these servers would be online for many more years had it not been for these hackers.

 

[Ryuhza]

Depressing. So, so depressing.

 

[andshrew]

That being said, why are so many folks here ignoring the fact that this wasn't Sony deciding one day to close the server for laughs, hackers are directly responsible for killing all LittleBigPlanet servers by displaying hate speech, forcing the system to detect wrongdoers completely wrong as to ban innocent people, DDOSing, and so on.

You can blame Sony, but it's likely these servers would be online for many more years had it not been for these hackers.

Click to shrink...

Not really, they'd still be online only if the servers weren't riddled with exploitable vulnerabilities.

If you want to put a service on the Internet, you should be doing so under the assumption that it will be under attack 24/7. All this has demonstrated is that Sony has no long term plan for supporting their software.

 

[wafflebrain]

Sad, would be nice to see a trilogy collection that includes some of the highest rated community creations as a pack in for each game. But who am I kidding Sony probably doesn't care despite Sackboy being one of their better mascots. Astro Bot is great but I wonder if they care that much about that IP anymore either. Full speed ahead on the GAAS train yay :/

 

[Gamespawn]

If the content servers are still up, doesn't that mean you can still use and download levels/content just not play multiplayer?

 

[SirNinja]

It is kind of odd how Sackboy went from being basically PlayStation's mascot, to having an indifferent Sony kill off the final LBP by choosing not to fix a server vulnerability.

I know I'm oversimplifying things here, but still. What happened to this franchise?

 

[DeadDuck144]

The top of my Sony wishlist is still a LittleBigPlanet remastered collection. Crossplay between PS and PC, DualSense features, maybe translate some of the user-content over. Don't imagine it would have to be a resource-intensive project, but I'd really appreciate it. This series deserves better.

 

[Jon God]

Not really, they'd still be online only if the servers weren't riddled with exploitable vulnerabilities.

If you want to put a service on the Internet, you should be doing so under the assumption that it will be under attack 24/7. All this has demonstrated is that Sony has no long term plan for supporting their software.

Click to shrink...

I mean, it's not the first time this has happened to a game, Metal Gear Online 2 also got taken down by hackers.

Again though, these servers were programmed in the late 00s, and didn't suffer from issues until fairly recently, I don't think it's easy to go "Man, screw Sony/MM for not doing better!"

I just think we should devote our anger at the folks who actively worked to take it down, rather than telling the victim it's their fault.

 

[The Artisan]

No, the resource server is still online.


View: https://twitter.com/lbpunion/status/1781404355742101646?t=6wXdtyWxl-UDbwnFTatSfA

Someone mentioned why it's difficult to fix the server issues plaguing the game:

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so all of the player created content is still there, just inaccessible?

man, do I miss LBP2 especially. if only they could just remaster the first two.

 

[delete12345]

so all of the player created content is still there, just inaccessible?

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Yeah, I believed that's what the tweet is saying.

 

[horkrux]

It is kind of odd how Sackboy went from being basically PlayStation's mascot, to having an indifferent Sony kill off the final LBP by choosing not to fix a server vulnerability.

I know I'm oversimplifying things here, but still. What happened to this franchise?

Click to shrink...

I just get the feeling Sony don't believe in mascots lol

 

[The Albatross]

Aah, that's too bad for the series. I love how creative LBP1 and 2 were, and the idea of user generated levels you could download online was just so unique and fresh at the time. Too bad that all of this content is just..... gone.

 

[The Artisan]

Yeah, I believed that's what the tweet is saying.

Click to shrink...

there must be reason in keeping it.

how expensive would it be for Sony to just remaster the first two games? I'm not even asking for a remaster of the original trilogy, just the first two games that were originally made by Media Molecule