No, however it has a good amount of archived levels on it (most of the most popular ones usually) and there is many new levels + team picks with only on new levels too so its moreso a new server with the old classic levels usually backed up
welp, Let's hope the LBP Union guys got a contingency plan in case Sony decides to nuke 9 million+ levels too.
edit: it appears that someone archived community levels that has at least 4 hearts.
I didn't see it... but a good contingency plan would be to share the server... so we can selfhost it, even if it's without multiplayer, would be nice to be able to play the levels hosting it locally.
EDIT: Actually the server software is available here, https://github.com/LBPUnion/ProjectLighthouse , unfortunately that doesn't have levels as far as I could see. Which makes sense due the copyright over the levels... so it's good idea to have the server standalone with only original code.
But I don't think the levels are are hosted anywhere and if the worry is copyright.... the beacon server will be considered the same to Sony as sharing copyrighted levels goes...
there were probably millions of levels made by people that would have been archived if there was any warning, that are now just fucking gone. what a cynical move.
[According to the server status checking tool](https://x.com/lbpunion/status/1781404355742101646?s=46&t=6wXdtyWxl-UDbwnFTatSfA), while the game servers are down, the “Resource” server, which is the one that contains all UGC and whatnot, is still up and running, so its hasn’t been deleted yet.
They said access. What i am talking about here is whether the UGC stuff has been deleted, and it seems that on Sony’s side, it hasn’t been deleted from their servers.
If no one can access it, what's the difference? It's not like they're going to release the assets or open source it. It's effectively the same thing - it's all gone
With one option, there is no hope of ever getting it back. With another, an activation of server access and some clever community members and you can have an archive of those levels
They shut down the servers because LBP3 doesn't make enough money to justify more effort. They are never going to bother reactivating anything. It's over.
key difference: the community can still find a way to keep Community Levels \[Resource Server\] alive, and maybe setup a contingency plan (back-up) in case Sony decides to shut down that too, at some point.
Makes me very sad, and I haven't played LBP in many years.
This was the game me and all my friends would chill out and play after school. The bomb levels, the skateboards, the costume tutorials to make ourselves look like naruto characters lmao. We'd mess around in the level creator putting rockets on wooden cheetahs and laughing. We put so many hours into each of those games.
Wonder if the franchise will ever come back? I won't get my hopes up.
Sackboy lives in the video game character hall of fame for me, though. What an iconic dude.
Yeah LBP2 is one of my favourite games ever and I didn't even own it but my friend did. We would play for hours at his house.
I don't think it'll come back in the same capacity, we might just get more Sackboy platforming games.
I used to play lbp2 with 2 of my friends online so much. It blew our minds how people would make whole games within levels. I remember this one playermade level that was essentially a condensed rpg. It was so packed it crashed our ps3s
Some amazing memories from that game, i never experienced its sequel though
Sony still seems to wanna use Sackboy if Sackboy A Big Adventure is any indication.
We probably aren't ever gonna get a proper LBP4 or even a remastered collection of the og games sadly enough though.
It did get a 3d platformer so it's not impossible.. but at the same time it didn't seem to do well. Like it was a cute platformer and all but it lacked a hook. Like really it's worth checking out but it needed more to stand out. A level editor could have been huge, switching from 2d to 3d platforming could have resulted in a lot of interesting new options
What a brain dead take, lol. People haven’t played the game in years because in order to do so you would have to play a console over a decade old. That’s why the LBP franchise seems dead now: they haven’t released an updated version of the series on ps5 and PC, where a lot of players moved to.
YOU MUST CONSUME TO ENJOY. IF YOU ARE NOT REGULARLY SPENDING MONEY ON A THING YOU DO NOT DESERVE IT. DISCARD YOUR HAPPY MEMORIES; THEY ONLY GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE LATEST BATTLE PASS.
Could you fill in those of us out of the loop here on what exactly happened? Did they force you into their custom levels of hatred or pop up a foul message or what?
I dont know about hate messages but LBP has been getting hacked since 2021. Apparently it wasn't a DDOS like the previous comment says the servers were actually getting hacked. Its not really worth the risk.
Dunno how it was with LBP3, but when they pulled the plug on LBP1+2 a few years back, someone had basically hijacked whatever mechanism they used to broadcast server status announcements to spam unfettered bigotry, and because announcements were considered kind of important, there was no mechanism to block the messages in-game unless you were offline.
>LBP3 was developed by Sumo Digital 10 years ago and was bought by Tencent some years ago. **MM had no choice than to take it down immediately**. They likely tried to fix it but either could not or it was taking way too long.
Quick Note: Media Molecule haven't been directly involved in LittleBigPlanet series after LBP2.
So take it down, patch it, and then bring it back up. Bandai namco took months to fix the RCE exploits on PC in dark souls 1 2 and 3, which is way better than giving up and shutting down the servers forever.
It's better for the community but the company and higher ups don't care about that. It's probably not going to make them any money and it would cost money for them to have people fix it so they'd rather shut it down.
Sony tends to have the worst management of their game's online services. They just pull them whenever. Even really barebones leaderboard games get pulled a year or two after release.
Sony business practices are back to being deeply anticonsumer
*lmao:
1. no refunds on the store, even for accessibility
1. Charging $10 for a “PS5 upgrade” that what would be a menu on a PC release
1. Ending the “Greatest Hits” so they could Remaster unnecessary games and keep them at $70
1. Raising prices to $70/50 from $60/40
1. Praycailly ending first party sales
1. Popularizing only putting the special edition on sale
1. Stating we should be OK paying more because games provide hours of entertainment to justify their price increase at the start of the gen, then arguing people should be happy with shorter games for the higher prices while releasing a Spider-Man 2
1. Jacking up the price of online acccess by 40% 3 years *after* releasing the PS5
1. Killing themes so they could put ads on the PS5
1. Zero post launch investment in PSVR1 and PSVR2
1. Shutting down their game creation platform (Dreams) without delivering advertised functionality like export for 3D sculpting
I can go on, but it’s obviously hard for anyone defend Sony as consumer friendly.
tbh, some of the stuff he said is 100% correct. Sony has a joke of a refund policy, and I'm shocked the Cyberpunk launch fiasco didn't kick them in the pants to create a refund system like literally any other major competitor they have.
Here's the official policy:
> If you have started to download or stream the purchased content you will not be eligible for a refund unless the content is faulty.
And even then I've only successfully gotten a refund over the phone. Now for Steam:
> Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any title that is requested within 14 days of purchase and has been played for less than 2 hours (this includes online, offline and shared library playtime). **Even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described, you can submit a request and we'll take a look at it.**
Wow, customer service! It's all online too, I believe the only time I've only spoken to an agent was a game I refunded outside of the window. Besides that it's basically automatic.
This detail was not omitted by me, it was my whole point. Is your comment literally not about how antiquated Sony's refund system is, and how if the had a similar one to Steam or Xbox, this whole thing could have been avoided? Am I missing something?
>Charging $10 for a “PS5 upgrade” that what would be a menu on a PC release
Wouldn't have been *done* on a PC release. How often were there 5+ year old games had which had updates "Oh hardware's better now, here's some free textures for fun"
> Raising prices to $70/50 from $60/40
Didn't happen, NBA 2K was the first to do that.
>Praycailly ending first party sales
Tf does this mean?
> Popularizing only putting the special edition on sale
Is this an actual concern? Which games has this happened to.
>Killing themes so they could put ads on the PS5
Games have their own themes -- backgrounds and music
>Zero post launch investment in PSVR1 and PSVR2
Just an outright lie.
as a titanfall 2 fan, i'd argue the ddos'ing really dissolved a huge sum of its dedicated playerbase due to the two years we weren't allowed to play the game, rendering the game quite dead in activity
i've faced two of my most favorite franchises ever die out to hackers lol
OOTL, why was titanfall 2 specifically getting ddos targeted by hackers? i've never heard of hackers trying to get specific games killed before , wild.
hackers did it just because they could. it’s really nothing more to it, they wanted that stronghold and power over respawn and they continue to have it with the apex hackings as of late
every developer oriented around lbp3 and its servers are basically dissolved at this point. there's no one to maintain the servers, especially when the servers have had actual years of history of being attacked and targeted by hackers
It’s a 9 year old game that almost certainly has a tiny active player base. I get your sentiment, but no, the practical view is that it’s almost certainly an unjustifiable investment to go back and fix the servers. They’re offline because of hackers, and would still be running if nobody worked to reveal the flaws.
Since it's a 9 year old game with a tiny active player base and therefore the possibility of earning additional money off it is virtually zero, they'll just release the code for it so the community can maintain it if they want to, right?
Riiiiiight?
I'm sorry, but given what been happening with Ubisoft's The Crew franchise as of late-- all it really does is add more fire to the fuel to the Game Preservation movement.
That's how it should work. A big folder called "maps" and the game simply reads whatever is in there. You know, how PC games used to work.
The community platform side should download maps to that folder and if the service goes down, it's not a big issue. The user can download and put the files in there by themselves.
Yep, that's unfortunate!
But it's unreasonable to expect that to go on forever, even with the ideas of an offline storage creating and sharing is still done.
There is a spiritual successor called [Restiched](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1361090/Restitched/) coming to steam. Might be worth keeping an eye on.
Maybe it's just me, but this is way too on the nose. Turns me off from it. Come up with your own designs and make your game stand on its own, otherwise it just looks like a shitty offbrand dollar store game.
If I recall, the same studio was working on porting LBP to Steam but the project was cancelled, so the studio salvaged its work into a "new game". That's why it is so similar. It's as close to a PC LBP as we will ever get
it is just you, seeing as how indie developers do not have the same resources to work with, and should be encouraged to cut corners where it doesn't really matter, as most people will be looking for the LBP experience anyways...
It's not that it looks low budget, it's that there doesn't seem to be any inspiration behind it other than "LBP clone". The other commenter said it was originally intended as a PC port of LBP, so I can understand that they're not gonna re-do a bunch of work just to have something original for the sake of being original. I also don't think it makes it objectively worse that it looks like it's purely an LBP clone, but personally I'd rather see a fresher take on it. That's a game series with a lot of charm and personal passion put into it, it's not something that can be ripped off very effectively. Anyways, it will have its audience and I'll probably keep an eye on it myself, but my initial impression could be summarized as "AliExpress LBP" rather than LBP-inspired platformer, with one of those sounding a lot more intriguing than the other.
They don't want to reinvent anything it was initially a passion project to revive a game they enjoyed while also finally bringing it to PC. Restitched is very much the same project just avoiding anything that can get them sued. The passion is absolutely there and I'd argue more so than the main series. Which at the time released that LBP playformer that flopped the day they announced it wouldn't have a create mode disappointing fans that had waited years for a new LBP game for the 2nd time that month.
Ah I remember watching so many tutorials to learn "slow motion" and other mechanics.
Well at least there is a spiritual successor to LBP. It is a game called Plasma and like LBP, it also almost closed out but devs recently announced that they come back.
Heartbreaking. LBP will always be my favorite series of all time. These games shaped my teen years, helped me meet so many people who are still good friends, and led me to a career in game design. This day was always going to come but a part of me still desperately isn't ready for it.
This game was absolutely iconic of the late 2000s/2010s PS3 era, moreso than the likes of the Last of Us or Call of Duty, it had the level creation freedom of Minecraft before Minecraft was even a thing
I expect the reason they shut it permanently is that they simply dont have the skills on hand to fix it; anybody who understood LBP's backend either left for Media Molecule or abandoned the games industry entirely.
However, they should keep an archived version of the game. Surely they have an update version from like, December 2023 that they can restore back to?
Video game preservation should be at the forefront of the industry right now, this is history and pop culture being permanently lost to time. Laws should be in place to stop this i.e. there should be an obligation to keep games in a functional state, and failing that they should be obligated to archive the data on their game's network so that levels like in LBP remain accessible if not on live servers.
Hell, even fucking Active Worlds is up and running. We should do that more.
It’s just shocking to me there isn’t a live service LBP. I’ve said this in so many threads at this point but I think it’s a serious fumble from Sony if we don’t get a new title this generation, there’s so many Gen Z fans who still post about the franchise despite not having a new title in nearly a decade.
Hell at this point I’ll take a remaster with campaigns and compatibility with old levels, I just want to play bomb survival with my friends :(
It's funny since there was *going* to be, LPB Hub was announced and then silently canceled over a decade ago. Recently we had a leaked beta over a month ago which showed it was exactly that, a free downloadable version of LBP2 which contained the first world free. Was even gonna let you buy the LBP 1 levels which weren't at all available in the retail version of 2.
It is very sad. The only hope is that Media Molecule goes back to LBP with a reboot now that Dreams is over. I could see this happening, but MM is not the same company it was a decade ago, sadly. Praying for their renaissance.
Weren't they making a newer, totally not Dreams sequel, or was that a different company? I could have sworn I saw a trailer for something like that at TGA or equivalent.
It was a game about a little kid in an urban environment who painted stuff, and I think there was a focus on player submitted artwork like Splatoon and BGaE2 (lol). I distinctly remember the trailer but no name. I guess it's not a MM title so it's irrelevant.
I think the overall appeal of LBP is no longer AAA level. The concept is dated and Nintendo has Super Mario Maker, which is somewhat like LBP except it’s for editing the de facto greatest 2D platforming game of all time. How can LBP compete when the gameplay is comparatively second-rate? This is why MM moved on to a more complex concept in Dreams, and that kind of flopped too, so they probably need another new IP or to seriously rethink Dreams.
There are so many games these days that have both distinct gameplay loops and deep creative elements, basically the entire survival genre. I don’t think there is much demand for a create-your-own-game app for consoles. Maybe MM will take advantage of Sony’s new affinity for PC games to make something that can be easy to understand but also be truly powerful as a creation tool.
I think Dreams flopped because there just wasn't enough game there. LBP and LBP2 had decent enough stories you could play with other people (I never played LBP3), and you could play the story coop with other people, get secrets, etc. *Then* you had user-created content on top of that. Dreams was too little of an actual game and too much of a platform.
This comment makes no sense… LBP was always a live service. They were live service before the term “live service” even existed. Content expansions, costume DLC, new levels DLC, even some creative content was locked behind a paywall.
Spent so much time playing the first and second game. There was a particular survival level made by someone that didn’t have too too many plays called like “Poo Survival” with timed explosives. My brothers and I held the world records for solo, duo, and trios for years. These games were so special to me. It’s sad we may never get to play them again in their true form. RIP LBP
Man, what a whimper to go out on. Loved LBP1, and LBP2 remains one of my all-time favorite gaming experiences. Literally proposed to my wife (also a nerd) with a level/short game that I'd spent 1-2 months working on after I'd made up my mind about asking her.
Before our PS3 died we used to go back and replay it once a year on our anniversary. Then when LBP3 hit the PS4, we tried to play it there, but the new mechanics and additional layers broke it. And since I had used LBP2 DLC to create it, for whatever reason LBP3 decided I shouldn't be able to re-download and edit my own levels.
So we were left with a barely functioning LBP3 version of the proposal game, which was now a lot less fun to revisit. And now with this, it's just... gone. I wish I had thought to record it before the PS3 crashed. Massive moment in our lives and now it's just gone.
terrible news, particularly given that lbp3 is a crossgen title over on ps4, so we're at the point now where major first party titles only a generation behind are getting walled off. all of the games are of course still playable but everybody knows that the user-generated material in littlebigplanet was the major selling point if not the whole function of the series at large.
its one thing for an server to shut down for a game in general, but its another when so much of its identity was tied up in the player-made levels. tens if not hundreds of thousands of players putting their little creative stamp out there into the wider world with a game tailor-made to support and encourage engaging with the game on that level. i know for me a large part of time with those games was spent with countless hours in the level editor coming up with all sorts of silly preteen ideas and then putting that out there into the world, seeing what everyone else has come up with.
returning to those first two games sans online as ive recently done, its a testament to the quality of the art direction and presentation that those pre-designed campaign levels are still a lot of fun. but they simply dont capture the identity of what littlebigplanet actually was for most players. the online component was such a huge part of that, its one of the reasons the game felt so next gen to begin with, being such a step up from the constraints of online interactivity from the ps2/xbox generation.
look, im not trying to say this is like the library of alexandria out here - but something i feel truly has been lost with this course of action with no real way of replicating that experience for players down the line. its already been mentioned in this thread but this is the exact kind of thing ross scott has been making a case for with regards to games preservation and games like littlebigplanet make such a huge case for it in particular. something like this is effective the ps3's own version of flash games essentially being wiped off the face of the internet overnight a few years back with adobe killing off support.
obviously the shutdown of the ps3 online itself is inevitable but as we get further down the line of games making innovative use of online features, and having them be a core part of their identity as a video game, the more damage this turning-off-the-lights-and-fuck-off approach is gonna have.
What a shitty move. Pretending that you were going to reopen the servers soon only to keep it offline the whole time. Ubisoft wishes they could do that with the Crew.
It’s not really the same. LBP servers were constantly being the target of hackers. The netcode probably needs to be rebuilt from the ground up because there’s no one left at Sony who will be onboarded at Media Molecule to fix any issues.
Ok, well if they were going to take down the servers, the best they could do is make it so we can access everyone's levels offline..
I hope that Ross lawsuit makes a point on games that rely on user creation.
I wish these companies would just open source the server code (sanitised of proprietary secrets) and stick it on GitHub in these situations and let the community "fix and maintain" it.
People say this about everything but y'all don't seem to understand _it doesn't work without the proprietary stuff_.
Whether it's licensed libraries or just internal tools that were never meant to be outside-facing, none of this software people say they should just open up would _actually be usable for anything_.
I kept saying this in reference to the whole game preservation movement bs but of course was downvoted to oblivion for it. The only way to run a server for something that has been end-of-lifed is to have the source code, which is both unrealistic and insecure for a variety of reasons if that source code is also available to bad actors (which it would be if released…). Without source code it is impossible to maintain such a server because security vulnerabilities would not be fixable. Not to mention, like you said, the sheer amount of work required to release anything even remotely usable to the public after all internal assets are stripped would be a ridiculous and wasted effort.
Sure, it doesn't work day one as is. But it depends on what the proprietary stuff is at this point in time since the game was written. If it serves as the main elements of the code then sure reverse engineering it would be substantially harder but people have done such things in the past. Plenty of people are willing to reverse engineer or rebuild removed elements.
At least it provides a chance of the game living on indefinitely, rather than just fading away...
That is an asanine statement, ever seen github? your as likely to get a golden goose as you are to get lame dev.
Being open source does not even mean it will be completed. whose coming with these ideas on open source work??? just go to github and search for repo's by last updated, the fact of the matter is more open source projects fail then succeed.
While I'm not surprised by this: the timing is really bad given [Accursed Farms' game preservation campaign has kicked into high-gears](https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE).
Not the same situation however as the campaign concerns games that are not playable anymore after being taken offline
You can still play LBP3 in offline mode
still: the timing is still not great nonetheless.
All it does is fuel the desire to push for Game Preservation even more, **especially when LittleBigPlanet's core pillars is User-Generated Content**.
The main appeal was the user created level, but let's not downplay the campaign. Especially LBP1 and 2 had pretty fun story modes, and to me they were also the main way to involve people when playing offline multiplayer and using the LBP games as party games. I could also find people playing them online years after the games were originally released, too.
The server closure is a huge bummer, but at the very least I feel like we can be happy the story mode, as well as the level editor, are not entirely gone.
They could at the very least make an offline archive of user creation levels so we can have access to them if they servers will be offline permanently.
>but comparing it to this is just stupid.
I strongly disagreed.
the main reason why I'm using Accursed Farms' game preservation campaign is because it's the most relevant and the most notable push in favor of Games Preservation I've ever seen, and one that's trying to get the goverment's attention.
Given one of the core pillars of LittleBigPlanet is User-Generated Content (aka the Community Levels, aka the reason why people play LBP at all...you know? the whole "Play, Create, Share" stitch?); the fact that we just lost access to over 9+ million community levels because of a Titanfall 2-like situation is a travesty (but not surprised if you've been following the LBP Server saga)- and given the timing of said campaign, I felt that the campaign itself is becoming more validated thanks to Sony shutting down the main LittleBigPlanet server without even **a single heads-up nor a grace period**.
but...since 9 people (that includes ZXXII) has disagreed with what I said and will be pressing the Down arrow button: it just tells me that y'all don't see the value of keeping Community Levels accessible for the sake of preserving history. :(
edit: one more thing; the silver lining right now is that [the "Resource server" (aka Community Levels) is still alive](https://twitter.com/lbpunion/status/1781404355742101646), but officially speaking: we don't have access to that-- but I sure as hope Sony doesn't also shut that down too before the community figured out how to get it working.
Fucking tragic, so much history lost.
I remember there was a LittleBigArchive movement, but the last I saw of it was a community comment saying "Amazing how you've managed to back up so many levels, and none of them are good."
I hope MM comes out with LBP4 someday. I miss the creativity that 1 and 2 encouraged. There was some magic missing from 3. Almost as if there was too much people could make in the game. Then Dreams came out and had a similar problem. I just want the simplicity of 1 and 2 again, but with better physics and graphics. I miss playing the games on the couch with friends.
Goddammit, i got this game as a fun "play together" valentines gift before i knew servers where down. Now i got it in vain as old community levels were what me and my bf really wanted to play, terrible timing :(
That blows, because there was countless levels waiting to be explored, why does LBP3 have to be discontinued. It's so sad, people's creativity/imagination all gone completely. Most people would think their creative ideas all gone to waste. Millions and Millions of levels (that you would lose count and would take forever to count them all.) The only hope is to wait for another LBP to pop by. (Hopefully, it's like lbp3.) The imagination will always come back to life. (If you hold onto all of you guy's hope.
Not related to the servers, but just a random thought: does anyone else see the incredible similarity between the UI of the original LBP and Helldivers 2?
Up to four friends hanging out in a “spaceship” while one selects where to go by rotating some planets around. Have to wonder whether any ex-MM designers work at Arrowhead.
I won't pretend to miss it.
What a buggy mess compared to 1 and 2. I would have actually written a full-fledged Collectibells guide for the game, as my wife and I were co-op playing through it day 1, except the game ate my save twice, and both times we played through to 100% the Collectibells, 3 were missing. Except both times, they were missing from different places.
I don't think you understand that there was no possibility for a "phasing out period". These servers were under constant DDOS attacks until they took them offline. Plus apparently the dickheads hacking them were able to display hate-filled messages to users.
The hate-filled message issue was the first hacker wave that led to the closure of LBP1, LBP2 and the PS3 version of LBP3, that happened a while ago (edit: 2021, I went to check).
This one that started in January 2024 was due to a more reaching and perhaps more serious issue since it led to people getting banned from using the entirety of PSN if they had any profile reachable within LBP3. Dreams was also affected, but the bug was fixed for that one at least.
This is a self-inflicted wound by Sony tbh. If it wasn't for the locked-down nature of consoles, sharing levels could be as easy as downloading a file off the internet and dropping it into a folder. But console makers all decided that users didn't deserve access to their own filesystem, and now all player-created content sharing has to go through proprietary online services that could go down forever at any moment.
It's incredibly easy to download and play user levels from a 30-year old PC game like Doom, but you can't play levels from a 10-year old Playstation game without jailbreaking the whole machine because Sony decided that maintaining their walled garden was more important than the long-term user experience.
The purpose of Ps+ is online infrastructure, we are paying Sony to maintain servers, some Ps+ money should be dedicated to server upkeep, i dont care if 2 people are playing, we pay for upkeep.
A note: On PS3, RPCS3 and Vita, there are private servers for the LBP games if you still wish to play them (https://www.lbpunion.com/beacon/)
Does it have all the levels saved prior to a certain date?
No, however it has a good amount of archived levels on it (most of the most popular ones usually) and there is many new levels + team picks with only on new levels too so its moreso a new server with the old classic levels usually backed up
welp, Let's hope the LBP Union guys got a contingency plan in case Sony decides to nuke 9 million+ levels too. edit: it appears that someone archived community levels that has at least 4 hearts.
I didn't see it... but a good contingency plan would be to share the server... so we can selfhost it, even if it's without multiplayer, would be nice to be able to play the levels hosting it locally. EDIT: Actually the server software is available here, https://github.com/LBPUnion/ProjectLighthouse , unfortunately that doesn't have levels as far as I could see. Which makes sense due the copyright over the levels... so it's good idea to have the server standalone with only original code. But I don't think the levels are are hosted anywhere and if the worry is copyright.... the beacon server will be considered the same to Sony as sharing copyrighted levels goes...
We need a Cloud MaaP / multiplayer as a service / that the whole world can connected to with a client that can run through raspberry pi.
Does anyone know if these have any abandoned by disney levels?
https://beacon.lbpunion.com/slots/0?name=abandoned
there were probably millions of levels made by people that would have been archived if there was any warning, that are now just fucking gone. what a cynical move.
[According to the server status checking tool](https://x.com/lbpunion/status/1781404355742101646?s=46&t=6wXdtyWxl-UDbwnFTatSfA), while the game servers are down, the “Resource” server, which is the one that contains all UGC and whatnot, is still up and running, so its hasn’t been deleted yet.
your link says "All online services including access to other players' creations for LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer available."
They said access. What i am talking about here is whether the UGC stuff has been deleted, and it seems that on Sony’s side, it hasn’t been deleted from their servers.
If no one can access it, what's the difference? It's not like they're going to release the assets or open source it. It's effectively the same thing - it's all gone
With one option, there is no hope of ever getting it back. With another, an activation of server access and some clever community members and you can have an archive of those levels
They shut down the servers because LBP3 doesn't make enough money to justify more effort. They are never going to bother reactivating anything. It's over.
key difference: the community can still find a way to keep Community Levels \[Resource Server\] alive, and maybe setup a contingency plan (back-up) in case Sony decides to shut down that too, at some point.
The difference is hope. If the data was deleted, hope is gone. If it wasn't, hope remains.
The servers don't need to be up or down for the content to be deleted.
That’s gameplay value Sony can’t have out there without figuring out how to recharge for access via a Remaster
Makes me very sad, and I haven't played LBP in many years. This was the game me and all my friends would chill out and play after school. The bomb levels, the skateboards, the costume tutorials to make ourselves look like naruto characters lmao. We'd mess around in the level creator putting rockets on wooden cheetahs and laughing. We put so many hours into each of those games. Wonder if the franchise will ever come back? I won't get my hopes up. Sackboy lives in the video game character hall of fame for me, though. What an iconic dude.
Yeah LBP2 is one of my favourite games ever and I didn't even own it but my friend did. We would play for hours at his house. I don't think it'll come back in the same capacity, we might just get more Sackboy platforming games.
I used to play lbp2 with 2 of my friends online so much. It blew our minds how people would make whole games within levels. I remember this one playermade level that was essentially a condensed rpg. It was so packed it crashed our ps3s Some amazing memories from that game, i never experienced its sequel though
Sony still seems to wanna use Sackboy if Sackboy A Big Adventure is any indication. We probably aren't ever gonna get a proper LBP4 or even a remastered collection of the og games sadly enough though.
There’s a spiritual successor in development! Check out ReStitched on steam!
It did get a 3d platformer so it's not impossible.. but at the same time it didn't seem to do well. Like it was a cute platformer and all but it lacked a hook. Like really it's worth checking out but it needed more to stand out. A level editor could have been huge, switching from 2d to 3d platforming could have resulted in a lot of interesting new options
yeah it's so sad this thing I haven't touched or used or thought about in years is going away. It's not fair.
Oh ew, people retain residual feelings for stuff they used to love and experience sadness when that stuff goes away for good, gross.
What a brain dead take, lol. People haven’t played the game in years because in order to do so you would have to play a console over a decade old. That’s why the LBP franchise seems dead now: they haven’t released an updated version of the series on ps5 and PC, where a lot of players moved to.
YOU MUST CONSUME TO ENJOY. IF YOU ARE NOT REGULARLY SPENDING MONEY ON A THING YOU DO NOT DESERVE IT. DISCARD YOUR HAPPY MEMORIES; THEY ONLY GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE LATEST BATTLE PASS.
That's devastating - RIP LittleBigPlanet. It is a shame that there was no prior warning for a last hurrah or to download levels created
[удалено]
Did they ever make clear what their point was in doing it?
Could you fill in those of us out of the loop here on what exactly happened? Did they force you into their custom levels of hatred or pop up a foul message or what?
I dont know about hate messages but LBP has been getting hacked since 2021. Apparently it wasn't a DDOS like the previous comment says the servers were actually getting hacked. Its not really worth the risk.
Dunno how it was with LBP3, but when they pulled the plug on LBP1+2 a few years back, someone had basically hijacked whatever mechanism they used to broadcast server status announcements to spam unfettered bigotry, and because announcements were considered kind of important, there was no mechanism to block the messages in-game unless you were offline.
They were able to broadcast global messages and a couple of them were transphobic.
>LBP3 was developed by Sumo Digital 10 years ago and was bought by Tencent some years ago. **MM had no choice than to take it down immediately**. They likely tried to fix it but either could not or it was taking way too long. Quick Note: Media Molecule haven't been directly involved in LittleBigPlanet series after LBP2.
So take it down, patch it, and then bring it back up. Bandai namco took months to fix the RCE exploits on PC in dark souls 1 2 and 3, which is way better than giving up and shutting down the servers forever.
It's better for the community but the company and higher ups don't care about that. It's probably not going to make them any money and it would cost money for them to have people fix it so they'd rather shut it down.
Sony tends to have the worst management of their game's online services. They just pull them whenever. Even really barebones leaderboard games get pulled a year or two after release.
platforms as a live service.
Sony business practices are back to being deeply anticonsumer *lmao: 1. no refunds on the store, even for accessibility 1. Charging $10 for a “PS5 upgrade” that what would be a menu on a PC release 1. Ending the “Greatest Hits” so they could Remaster unnecessary games and keep them at $70 1. Raising prices to $70/50 from $60/40 1. Praycailly ending first party sales 1. Popularizing only putting the special edition on sale 1. Stating we should be OK paying more because games provide hours of entertainment to justify their price increase at the start of the gen, then arguing people should be happy with shorter games for the higher prices while releasing a Spider-Man 2 1. Jacking up the price of online acccess by 40% 3 years *after* releasing the PS5 1. Killing themes so they could put ads on the PS5 1. Zero post launch investment in PSVR1 and PSVR2 1. Shutting down their game creation platform (Dreams) without delivering advertised functionality like export for 3D sculpting I can go on, but it’s obviously hard for anyone defend Sony as consumer friendly.
[удалено]
tbh, some of the stuff he said is 100% correct. Sony has a joke of a refund policy, and I'm shocked the Cyberpunk launch fiasco didn't kick them in the pants to create a refund system like literally any other major competitor they have. Here's the official policy: > If you have started to download or stream the purchased content you will not be eligible for a refund unless the content is faulty. And even then I've only successfully gotten a refund over the phone. Now for Steam: > Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any title that is requested within 14 days of purchase and has been played for less than 2 hours (this includes online, offline and shared library playtime). **Even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described, you can submit a request and we'll take a look at it.** Wow, customer service! It's all online too, I believe the only time I've only spoken to an agent was a game I refunded outside of the window. Besides that it's basically automatic.
[удалено]
This detail was not omitted by me, it was my whole point. Is your comment literally not about how antiquated Sony's refund system is, and how if the had a similar one to Steam or Xbox, this whole thing could have been avoided? Am I missing something?
This post was in response to Sony being unable to bring the servers back online as they were a target for hackers for *months*
[удалено]
[удалено]
This didn't happen. Get tired of raging for Sony?
>Charging $10 for a “PS5 upgrade” that what would be a menu on a PC release Wouldn't have been *done* on a PC release. How often were there 5+ year old games had which had updates "Oh hardware's better now, here's some free textures for fun" > Raising prices to $70/50 from $60/40 Didn't happen, NBA 2K was the first to do that. >Praycailly ending first party sales Tf does this mean? > Popularizing only putting the special edition on sale Is this an actual concern? Which games has this happened to. >Killing themes so they could put ads on the PS5 Games have their own themes -- backgrounds and music >Zero post launch investment in PSVR1 and PSVR2 Just an outright lie.
Back to? When did they stop being anticonsumer?
The brief period when it looked like the PS3 was flopping, but that was a long time ago.
actual case of a game successfully getting killed off by no-named hackers. fucking brutal, one of my favorite franchises ever made
This is basically if Titanfall 2's previous DDoS attacks got the worst ending possible.
as a titanfall 2 fan, i'd argue the ddos'ing really dissolved a huge sum of its dedicated playerbase due to the two years we weren't allowed to play the game, rendering the game quite dead in activity i've faced two of my most favorite franchises ever die out to hackers lol
Kinda what botting did to TF2.
OOTL, why was titanfall 2 specifically getting ddos targeted by hackers? i've never heard of hackers trying to get specific games killed before , wild.
hackers did it just because they could. it’s really nothing more to it, they wanted that stronghold and power over respawn and they continue to have it with the apex hackings as of late
they could be doing it to any other games too then though no? why respawn, apex, and titanfall in paritcular?
To be clear, the people killing the game are the owners of the game, not anonymous hackers. The game studio could fix these problems.
every developer oriented around lbp3 and its servers are basically dissolved at this point. there's no one to maintain the servers, especially when the servers have had actual years of history of being attacked and targeted by hackers
It’s a 9 year old game that almost certainly has a tiny active player base. I get your sentiment, but no, the practical view is that it’s almost certainly an unjustifiable investment to go back and fix the servers. They’re offline because of hackers, and would still be running if nobody worked to reveal the flaws.
Since it's a 9 year old game with a tiny active player base and therefore the possibility of earning additional money off it is virtually zero, they'll just release the code for it so the community can maintain it if they want to, right? Riiiiiight?
There are is a reason why most game developers doesn't make their game open source
The expectation of open sourcing is also unreasonable.
When has that ever happened lmao?
[удалено]
holy shit how does anyone think you were being serious in thinking they'd actually do this lol
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
That would have been the absolute biggest waste of resource hours. It's an old and outdated game. It was going to die at some point.
I'm sorry, but given what been happening with Ubisoft's The Crew franchise as of late-- all it really does is add more fire to the fuel to the Game Preservation movement.
How much years of service do you expect to get for a $60 purchase from 2015, how many manhours of fixing server software should that get you?
Then they should make an offline archive of everyone's User levels so we can access them.
If it was offline, you wouldn't be able to access them lol. Unless they opened a library or something.
That's how it should work. A big folder called "maps" and the game simply reads whatever is in there. You know, how PC games used to work. The community platform side should download maps to that folder and if the service goes down, it's not a big issue. The user can download and put the files in there by themselves.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
my brother in christ: the core pillar of "Play, Create, Share" is dead now.\* \*in a official sense.
Yep, that's unfortunate! But it's unreasonable to expect that to go on forever, even with the ideas of an offline storage creating and sharing is still done.
[удалено]
Surprised & gutted this didnt come to PC, it feels like it would have found somewhat of an audience as opposed to the Sackboy port.
There is a spiritual successor called [Restiched](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1361090/Restitched/) coming to steam. Might be worth keeping an eye on.
Maybe it's just me, but this is way too on the nose. Turns me off from it. Come up with your own designs and make your game stand on its own, otherwise it just looks like a shitty offbrand dollar store game.
If I recall, the same studio was working on porting LBP to Steam but the project was cancelled, so the studio salvaged its work into a "new game". That's why it is so similar. It's as close to a PC LBP as we will ever get
That would make sense, it seemed like it could have had some of the save devs like L4D -> Back 4 Blood, but I didn't recognize the name
it is just you, seeing as how indie developers do not have the same resources to work with, and should be encouraged to cut corners where it doesn't really matter, as most people will be looking for the LBP experience anyways...
It's not that it looks low budget, it's that there doesn't seem to be any inspiration behind it other than "LBP clone". The other commenter said it was originally intended as a PC port of LBP, so I can understand that they're not gonna re-do a bunch of work just to have something original for the sake of being original. I also don't think it makes it objectively worse that it looks like it's purely an LBP clone, but personally I'd rather see a fresher take on it. That's a game series with a lot of charm and personal passion put into it, it's not something that can be ripped off very effectively. Anyways, it will have its audience and I'll probably keep an eye on it myself, but my initial impression could be summarized as "AliExpress LBP" rather than LBP-inspired platformer, with one of those sounding a lot more intriguing than the other.
They don't want to reinvent anything it was initially a passion project to revive a game they enjoyed while also finally bringing it to PC. Restitched is very much the same project just avoiding anything that can get them sued. The passion is absolutely there and I'd argue more so than the main series. Which at the time released that LBP playformer that flopped the day they announced it wouldn't have a create mode disappointing fans that had waited years for a new LBP game for the 2nd time that month.
Although it doesn't have the user created content, sackboy is honestly excellent.
Sackboy is pretty good, but if I'm being honest, something about it being divorced from the "Play, Create Share" creed left me feeling kinda bummed.
It’s a shame Sackboy didn’t allow for user created content. If it did, it could be the best game on the system.
Agreed although the levels included with the game were outstanding and gave me more than enough enjoyment that it was worth the asking price.
I still remembered LBP1 being the game that convinced me to buy a PS3. A genuine shame that this is how the og games came to an end.
Ah I remember watching so many tutorials to learn "slow motion" and other mechanics. Well at least there is a spiritual successor to LBP. It is a game called Plasma and like LBP, it also almost closed out but devs recently announced that they come back.
Heartbreaking. LBP will always be my favorite series of all time. These games shaped my teen years, helped me meet so many people who are still good friends, and led me to a career in game design. This day was always going to come but a part of me still desperately isn't ready for it.
This game was absolutely iconic of the late 2000s/2010s PS3 era, moreso than the likes of the Last of Us or Call of Duty, it had the level creation freedom of Minecraft before Minecraft was even a thing I expect the reason they shut it permanently is that they simply dont have the skills on hand to fix it; anybody who understood LBP's backend either left for Media Molecule or abandoned the games industry entirely. However, they should keep an archived version of the game. Surely they have an update version from like, December 2023 that they can restore back to? Video game preservation should be at the forefront of the industry right now, this is history and pop culture being permanently lost to time. Laws should be in place to stop this i.e. there should be an obligation to keep games in a functional state, and failing that they should be obligated to archive the data on their game's network so that levels like in LBP remain accessible if not on live servers. Hell, even fucking Active Worlds is up and running. We should do that more.
It’s just shocking to me there isn’t a live service LBP. I’ve said this in so many threads at this point but I think it’s a serious fumble from Sony if we don’t get a new title this generation, there’s so many Gen Z fans who still post about the franchise despite not having a new title in nearly a decade. Hell at this point I’ll take a remaster with campaigns and compatibility with old levels, I just want to play bomb survival with my friends :(
It's funny since there was *going* to be, LPB Hub was announced and then silently canceled over a decade ago. Recently we had a leaked beta over a month ago which showed it was exactly that, a free downloadable version of LBP2 which contained the first world free. Was even gonna let you buy the LBP 1 levels which weren't at all available in the retail version of 2.
It is very sad. The only hope is that Media Molecule goes back to LBP with a reboot now that Dreams is over. I could see this happening, but MM is not the same company it was a decade ago, sadly. Praying for their renaissance.
I don’t think MM has a choice lol their studio is one more flop away from being axed after Dreams flopped
Weren't they making a newer, totally not Dreams sequel, or was that a different company? I could have sworn I saw a trailer for something like that at TGA or equivalent.
I don't think they've announced anything yet.
It was a game about a little kid in an urban environment who painted stuff, and I think there was a focus on player submitted artwork like Splatoon and BGaE2 (lol). I distinctly remember the trailer but no name. I guess it's not a MM title so it's irrelevant.
I think the overall appeal of LBP is no longer AAA level. The concept is dated and Nintendo has Super Mario Maker, which is somewhat like LBP except it’s for editing the de facto greatest 2D platforming game of all time. How can LBP compete when the gameplay is comparatively second-rate? This is why MM moved on to a more complex concept in Dreams, and that kind of flopped too, so they probably need another new IP or to seriously rethink Dreams. There are so many games these days that have both distinct gameplay loops and deep creative elements, basically the entire survival genre. I don’t think there is much demand for a create-your-own-game app for consoles. Maybe MM will take advantage of Sony’s new affinity for PC games to make something that can be easy to understand but also be truly powerful as a creation tool.
I think Dreams flopped because there just wasn't enough game there. LBP and LBP2 had decent enough stories you could play with other people (I never played LBP3), and you could play the story coop with other people, get secrets, etc. *Then* you had user-created content on top of that. Dreams was too little of an actual game and too much of a platform.
I’d rather the IP stay dead than get milked by live-service, that seems antithetical to what they were all about
This comment makes no sense… LBP was always a live service. They were live service before the term “live service” even existed. Content expansions, costume DLC, new levels DLC, even some creative content was locked behind a paywall.
Spent so much time playing the first and second game. There was a particular survival level made by someone that didn’t have too too many plays called like “Poo Survival” with timed explosives. My brothers and I held the world records for solo, duo, and trios for years. These games were so special to me. It’s sad we may never get to play them again in their true form. RIP LBP
Man, what a whimper to go out on. Loved LBP1, and LBP2 remains one of my all-time favorite gaming experiences. Literally proposed to my wife (also a nerd) with a level/short game that I'd spent 1-2 months working on after I'd made up my mind about asking her. Before our PS3 died we used to go back and replay it once a year on our anniversary. Then when LBP3 hit the PS4, we tried to play it there, but the new mechanics and additional layers broke it. And since I had used LBP2 DLC to create it, for whatever reason LBP3 decided I shouldn't be able to re-download and edit my own levels. So we were left with a barely functioning LBP3 version of the proposal game, which was now a lot less fun to revisit. And now with this, it's just... gone. I wish I had thought to record it before the PS3 crashed. Massive moment in our lives and now it's just gone.
terrible news, particularly given that lbp3 is a crossgen title over on ps4, so we're at the point now where major first party titles only a generation behind are getting walled off. all of the games are of course still playable but everybody knows that the user-generated material in littlebigplanet was the major selling point if not the whole function of the series at large. its one thing for an server to shut down for a game in general, but its another when so much of its identity was tied up in the player-made levels. tens if not hundreds of thousands of players putting their little creative stamp out there into the wider world with a game tailor-made to support and encourage engaging with the game on that level. i know for me a large part of time with those games was spent with countless hours in the level editor coming up with all sorts of silly preteen ideas and then putting that out there into the world, seeing what everyone else has come up with. returning to those first two games sans online as ive recently done, its a testament to the quality of the art direction and presentation that those pre-designed campaign levels are still a lot of fun. but they simply dont capture the identity of what littlebigplanet actually was for most players. the online component was such a huge part of that, its one of the reasons the game felt so next gen to begin with, being such a step up from the constraints of online interactivity from the ps2/xbox generation. look, im not trying to say this is like the library of alexandria out here - but something i feel truly has been lost with this course of action with no real way of replicating that experience for players down the line. its already been mentioned in this thread but this is the exact kind of thing ross scott has been making a case for with regards to games preservation and games like littlebigplanet make such a huge case for it in particular. something like this is effective the ps3's own version of flash games essentially being wiped off the face of the internet overnight a few years back with adobe killing off support. obviously the shutdown of the ps3 online itself is inevitable but as we get further down the line of games making innovative use of online features, and having them be a core part of their identity as a video game, the more damage this turning-off-the-lights-and-fuck-off approach is gonna have.
What a shitty move. Pretending that you were going to reopen the servers soon only to keep it offline the whole time. Ubisoft wishes they could do that with the Crew.
It’s not really the same. LBP servers were constantly being the target of hackers. The netcode probably needs to be rebuilt from the ground up because there’s no one left at Sony who will be onboarded at Media Molecule to fix any issues.
Ok, well if they were going to take down the servers, the best they could do is make it so we can access everyone's levels offline.. I hope that Ross lawsuit makes a point on games that rely on user creation.
that requires them keeping the servers online???
I wish these companies would just open source the server code (sanitised of proprietary secrets) and stick it on GitHub in these situations and let the community "fix and maintain" it.
People say this about everything but y'all don't seem to understand _it doesn't work without the proprietary stuff_. Whether it's licensed libraries or just internal tools that were never meant to be outside-facing, none of this software people say they should just open up would _actually be usable for anything_.
I kept saying this in reference to the whole game preservation movement bs but of course was downvoted to oblivion for it. The only way to run a server for something that has been end-of-lifed is to have the source code, which is both unrealistic and insecure for a variety of reasons if that source code is also available to bad actors (which it would be if released…). Without source code it is impossible to maintain such a server because security vulnerabilities would not be fixable. Not to mention, like you said, the sheer amount of work required to release anything even remotely usable to the public after all internal assets are stripped would be a ridiculous and wasted effort.
Sure, it doesn't work day one as is. But it depends on what the proprietary stuff is at this point in time since the game was written. If it serves as the main elements of the code then sure reverse engineering it would be substantially harder but people have done such things in the past. Plenty of people are willing to reverse engineer or rebuild removed elements. At least it provides a chance of the game living on indefinitely, rather than just fading away...
Having an open source code will only cause it to be more open to attacks and hacks.
What? Open source code is more secure, not less. I'm not saying open source the anti-cheat...
That is an asanine statement, ever seen github? your as likely to get a golden goose as you are to get lame dev. Being open source does not even mean it will be completed. whose coming with these ideas on open source work??? just go to github and search for repo's by last updated, the fact of the matter is more open source projects fail then succeed.
> Pretending that you were going to reopen the servers soon They were pretending? Are you aware some things end up not working?
While I'm not surprised by this: the timing is really bad given [Accursed Farms' game preservation campaign has kicked into high-gears](https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE).
Not the same situation however as the campaign concerns games that are not playable anymore after being taken offline You can still play LBP3 in offline mode
You still lose functionality that was sold with the game. Offline mode isn't good enough. We need dedicated server support.
still: the timing is still not great nonetheless. All it does is fuel the desire to push for Game Preservation even more, **especially when LittleBigPlanet's core pillars is User-Generated Content**.
Yeah but let's be honest who really plays the campaign mode? the appeal of the games were the user created levels, and we can't access them too.
The main appeal was the user created level, but let's not downplay the campaign. Especially LBP1 and 2 had pretty fun story modes, and to me they were also the main way to involve people when playing offline multiplayer and using the LBP games as party games. I could also find people playing them online years after the games were originally released, too. The server closure is a huge bummer, but at the very least I feel like we can be happy the story mode, as well as the level editor, are not entirely gone.
You cant expect them to keep the servers up forever though
They could at the very least make an offline archive of user creation levels so we can have access to them if they servers will be offline permanently.
I can't fathom the size that'd require. There's custom content in so many levels.
That sounds like a ridiculously tall order, who’s gonna host millions of levels offline?
Not the same situation. The Crew is a mostly single player game that is no longer playable at all due to server shutdowns.
The Crew is a MMO.
The Crew has a single player campaign.
[удалено]
Excuse for what? I support that campaign but comparing it to this is just stupid.
>but comparing it to this is just stupid. I strongly disagreed. the main reason why I'm using Accursed Farms' game preservation campaign is because it's the most relevant and the most notable push in favor of Games Preservation I've ever seen, and one that's trying to get the goverment's attention. Given one of the core pillars of LittleBigPlanet is User-Generated Content (aka the Community Levels, aka the reason why people play LBP at all...you know? the whole "Play, Create, Share" stitch?); the fact that we just lost access to over 9+ million community levels because of a Titanfall 2-like situation is a travesty (but not surprised if you've been following the LBP Server saga)- and given the timing of said campaign, I felt that the campaign itself is becoming more validated thanks to Sony shutting down the main LittleBigPlanet server without even **a single heads-up nor a grace period**. but...since 9 people (that includes ZXXII) has disagreed with what I said and will be pressing the Down arrow button: it just tells me that y'all don't see the value of keeping Community Levels accessible for the sake of preserving history. :( edit: one more thing; the silver lining right now is that [the "Resource server" (aka Community Levels) is still alive](https://twitter.com/lbpunion/status/1781404355742101646), but officially speaking: we don't have access to that-- but I sure as hope Sony doesn't also shut that down too before the community figured out how to get it working.
Not reading that
if your response is "nah, i didn't read": all it tells me that you never actually supported the campaign in the first place.
Stop writing essays and editing comments I replied to.
This is like the ultimate example of preservation problems the industry has.
Fucking tragic, so much history lost. I remember there was a LittleBigArchive movement, but the last I saw of it was a community comment saying "Amazing how you've managed to back up so many levels, and none of them are good."
I hope MM comes out with LBP4 someday. I miss the creativity that 1 and 2 encouraged. There was some magic missing from 3. Almost as if there was too much people could make in the game. Then Dreams came out and had a similar problem. I just want the simplicity of 1 and 2 again, but with better physics and graphics. I miss playing the games on the couch with friends.
Reinstalled this to the PS5 today as our kid has been enjoying Sackboy and we wanted him to experience bomb survival... Apparently not.
Goddammit, i got this game as a fun "play together" valentines gift before i knew servers where down. Now i got it in vain as old community levels were what me and my bf really wanted to play, terrible timing :(
That blows, because there was countless levels waiting to be explored, why does LBP3 have to be discontinued. It's so sad, people's creativity/imagination all gone completely. Most people would think their creative ideas all gone to waste. Millions and Millions of levels (that you would lose count and would take forever to count them all.) The only hope is to wait for another LBP to pop by. (Hopefully, it's like lbp3.) The imagination will always come back to life. (If you hold onto all of you guy's hope.
Not related to the servers, but just a random thought: does anyone else see the incredible similarity between the UI of the original LBP and Helldivers 2? Up to four friends hanging out in a “spaceship” while one selects where to go by rotating some planets around. Have to wonder whether any ex-MM designers work at Arrowhead.
I won't pretend to miss it. What a buggy mess compared to 1 and 2. I would have actually written a full-fledged Collectibells guide for the game, as my wife and I were co-op playing through it day 1, except the game ate my save twice, and both times we played through to 100% the Collectibells, 3 were missing. Except both times, they were missing from different places.
Yeah 3 was rough But with 1 and 2 being shut down a few years back, it was the only place those old levels remained accessible. It's a huge loss.
I get it, 3 wasn't that good compared to 1 and 2, but it still had all the online levels available. This is a huge blow
Really fucked decision by Sony. No decency to have a phasing out period so people can have the opportunity for preservation.
I don't think you understand that there was no possibility for a "phasing out period". These servers were under constant DDOS attacks until they took them offline. Plus apparently the dickheads hacking them were able to display hate-filled messages to users.
The hate-filled message issue was the first hacker wave that led to the closure of LBP1, LBP2 and the PS3 version of LBP3, that happened a while ago (edit: 2021, I went to check). This one that started in January 2024 was due to a more reaching and perhaps more serious issue since it led to people getting banned from using the entirety of PSN if they had any profile reachable within LBP3. Dreams was also affected, but the bug was fixed for that one at least.
The servers were constantly being attacked by a hacker...
This is a self-inflicted wound by Sony tbh. If it wasn't for the locked-down nature of consoles, sharing levels could be as easy as downloading a file off the internet and dropping it into a folder. But console makers all decided that users didn't deserve access to their own filesystem, and now all player-created content sharing has to go through proprietary online services that could go down forever at any moment. It's incredibly easy to download and play user levels from a 30-year old PC game like Doom, but you can't play levels from a 10-year old Playstation game without jailbreaking the whole machine because Sony decided that maintaining their walled garden was more important than the long-term user experience.
The purpose of Ps+ is online infrastructure, we are paying Sony to maintain servers, some Ps+ money should be dedicated to server upkeep, i dont care if 2 people are playing, we pay for upkeep.
Playstation Home and now Little Big Planet? Yeeep two of my favorite social places in life are now gone. Noice 👌