Sony has recently confirmed that LittleBigPlanet 3's servers will not be coming back online and will be shut down "indefinitely." With the shutdown of these servers, thousands of player-created levels from LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer accessible. This news comes after the shutdown of the servers in January 2024, which was initially stated to be a temporary closure.

LittleBigPlanet 3 was first released in 2014 for the PlayStation 3 and 4 consoles, developed by Sumo Digital and Media Molecule. The third game in the trilogy was received incredibly well, with the puzzle platformer being praised for its visuals, the creation mode, and other gameplay elements that the entry added. LittleBigPlanet 3's creation tools were robust, allowing players to create their own levels, characters, objects, and more, with these creations allowed to be shared online for other fans to play. However, several of these uploaded creations are now no longer accessible.

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On a new post on PlayStation's website regarding online features of certain games, LittleBigPlanet 3 is the newest one added. It acknowledges that the technical issues that resulted in LittleBigPlanet 3's servers being shut down at the start of the year were meant to be temporary. However, PlayStation and Sony have decided that the servers will be kept offline "indefinitely," meaning all online services and access to other player creations in the game are now no longer available, meaning hundreds of thousands of levels that were created over the past 15 years are lost.

What LittleBigPlanet 3's Shutdown Means

Any user-created content for LittleBigPlanet 3 can still be accessed and created on PS4 locally, but players won't be able to share it online. Other offline features like the story mode and multiplayer co-op of LittleBigPlanet 3 are still available for players, albeit through only local play as well.

The loss of all this user-generated content is the one aspect that has affected fans the most. Players saw part of the writing on the wall when Sony and PlayStation permanently shut off the servers for the PS3 LittleBigPlanet games, following a major DDoS attack the company suffered in 2021. With 15 years of player-created content gone, many lamented that they were unable to preserve the last of their creations before or after the "temporary" downtime. Fans and modders of LittleBigPlanet have been attempting to collect all of this lost media with their own archive, giving fans an alternate way to play these levels. Fans have also posted farewell and tribute messages in the wake of the servers being shut down indefinitely.

LittleBigPlanet 3

LittleBigPlanet 3 capped off the original LittleBigPlanet trilogy with another well-received entry. The game features a similar brand of puzzle-platform sandbox gameplay to its predecessors, despite being developed by a different studio.

Whereas the first two games were developed by Media Molecule, LittleBigPlanet 3 was developed by Sumo Digital, with Media Molecule providing additional work.

Franchise

LittleBigPlanet

Platform(s)

PS3 , PS4

Released

November 18, 2014

Developer(s)

Sumo Digital

Publisher(s)

Sony Computer Entertainment