LittleBigPlanet 3 Servers Are Officially Shut Down 'Indefinitely,' Sony Confirms

Sony has confirmed that LittleBigPlanet 3 servers on PlayStation 4 will remain offline “indefinitely” following troubles with the service from earlier this year.

[rlow1]

Sad day, hopefully they’ll allow a third party server solution. Goes to show game preservation is an uphill battle.

[blackblades]

Sad day oh wait everyone that whining about it didn't play it or haven't played it in years and never was going back to it. Funny how people start to care when this happens but when it was actually up those same people didn't even pay attention to it.

[rlow1]

First, you don’t know who has or hasn’t played it. So that’s your assumption. Secondly, even if people haven’t played it in awhile, it’s still nostalgia. Those memories of sharing your creation and having fun playing other peoples creations. Third, no game out there is really like this or as iconic. Today if they made this they would nickel and dime the whole way through and it would launch broken.

[Cacabunga]

Reason why i really dislike online games.. they become unplayable over time.. LBP story mode is actually only a tutorial

[_Decadent_Descent]

How would you know who's played it or not? What about those who get into games years after their release? They can't now. Besides, and more importantly, this sets a bad precedent across the industry when it comes to game preservation and people's ability to enjoy what they've paid for.

[blackblades]

People still play it but not a lot probably a fee people and I know you 2 guys haven't played it in a long time. If the server was doing so good it wouldnt be shut down. As I said the same people that whine and cry saying bad things on Sony etc are the same ones that havent or stopped playing a certain game in years. Let me ask you guys straight up and y'all tell the truth have you guys played it recently and when you did for how long did you play it.

[SonyStyled]

@blackblades “ Let me ask you guys straight up and y'all tell the truth have you guys played it recently and when you did for how long did you play it.”

Whatever “straight up” and “y’all” is, I can tell you the “truth” to answer your question.

I’ve been playing LBP2 for the past 5 years, I have 10 levels to Ace in a row and a coupe more hours in create mode for platinum. I played LBP2 earlier today in crate mode.

It sucked when LBP 1 and 2 servers were closed on PS3, but all those creations were still playable on PS4 LBP3.

Every level creation since LBP1 can’t be played now

[CDbiggen]

Just disappointing. I have such nostalgia for this game and the user levels from LBP 1&2 and I already was gutted when they were shut down but at least they were on LBP3, and now this means I can't ever revisit those creative worlds again. All because some trolls or whatever decided to exploit these games, of all games, for some reason.

[just_looken]

What needs to be highlighted by this is that the series has had 4 main games then that go kart spin off yet sony let them all die.

There is 0 games like this on ps5 and to my knowledge 0 first party main kids games no tech demo crap

Sony purchased Media Molecule studio the ip then tossed it away letting it rot for over 7 years yet the community carried on until now were we have lost 16 years on all games of content along with no replacement.

Everyone goes on about ea killing studios but sony has killed way way more but its fine its sony they can do no wrong.

Before the sony blidboys track me down again go fire up your holy boxes all the dlc they tossed out all the trophies and all the user content needs a server side handshake that no longer works. Yes offline single player version 1.0 works but that is it.

Media Molecule was not cut i know but they only made LBP and dreams it was reported they just missed the chopping block
https://gamerant.com/little...

Do not forget the dreams game was tossed out 2020 but 3 years later support was pulled
https://www.digitaltrends.c...

All in all this is another failure at sony on a long long list in the past 10 years

[Inverno]

It's kind of hard to disagree when SONY has a history of abandoning many of their IPs. They killed Mod Nation and turnt it into LBP Karting because of brand recognition but left it to die too. They made their own Smash Bros only to rush the studio, and turn the game into an advert for recent release at the time and still let it die. They shut down PS Home for more or less the same reason, they left it to rott till it became too broken and exploited to bother fixing.

[Mr_cheese]

RIP PS HOME

[just_looken]

This right here

Playstation home is what facebook is trying to make now but in vr that metaverse deal

Imagine if sony kept up ps home development

The death of playstation forums was also a huge loss

[Demetrius]

When they refused a days gone sequel and no acknowledgement of a infamous series remaster of those gems, I knew Sony slick abandons stuff, sure they still release good games but to an extent smh

[u-bEttA-rUn]

Their games were unable to attract the masses every game that came out the attachment grew smaller and smaller they advertise LBP for years the industry changed and then came fortnight... You want Sony to continue to support them which cost them money that they're not getting back from the studio.

[DOMination-]

Honestly, I think a well-designed LBP-style game would do better than ever in the current state of the industry.

People have short attention spans. Having something that is pick up, play a few levels and put down again is the experience the "masses" are after.

Keep it as a 2D platformer only with well-designed base levels, make it easy to build new levels and more importantly easy to access new content - personally I always found the way Forze Horizon 4&5 provide daily, weekly and monthly challenges via new content that they've built or handpicked from the community is a system that works great - and then stick it on mobile and PC with Steam Deck support.

Make it F2P with a one-off fee for the level editor (to stop people spamming crap onto the store) and have MTX for more characters, outfits etc. and there you have a live service game that Sony should be all over.

Do the same with a new Karting game and a 2D fighting/Smash Bros style engine and you have three bangers right there.

(I appreciate the N4G community will hate the idea of LBP being a live service game with MTX and I get that but I think if there's one game this model could work well for, it's this.. just imo)

[anast]

Astro's is similar.

Not enough people cared to play it, so they cut it.

Sony has never been a kid friendly console. This should be obvious. People go to Nintendo for this stuff.

[DarkZane]

All signs actually point to a new Astrobot game coming to PS5, so you'd be wrong.

[anast]

It's the game that came with the PS5

[StoneTitan]

Its on media molecule though. They did not want to continue LBP. Sony accepted that.
Sumo continued it. With a solala lbp3 and a great sackboy though.
Its not sonys fault. They dont want to force a studio to create a new LBP game.
But I would love a revival.

[Tacoboto]

I feel bad for Media Molecule. For the ideas they have it seems they need a publisher that supports games like this and Dreams especially for as many players as possible.

[DOMination-]

Sony in the Andrew House era did support them massively though. They let them do their thing with LBP and spent millions marketing it. I remember one E3 they even used LBP to cover the boring parts of the presentation where they talk about sales figures etc.

And then they allowed MM to announce their game on the PS4 console announcement/showcase event and waited the entire generation for them to release it.

[TheColbertinator]

Sony killing off their games as usual. Next up is Dreams.

[just_looken]

They already did end of last year i tossed link on this thread the servers are up but 0 support is being put in. So at any time the can pull the online cord.

[gold_drake]

i still dont quite understand why they never bothered to remaster 1 and 2

[just_looken]

The closest thing they did was put a gutted version on that streaming platform.

Meanwhile paper mario heck mario is making bank

[badz149]

Are you seriously comparing LBP to Mario? In terms of popularity and recognition, they are worlds apart! Gamers biy Playstations for the variety of games it has from 1st to 3rd parties but most people buy Nintendo consoles and handhelds for Mario and friends. LBP is just another IP on Playstations but Mario is THE IP for Nintendo. lBP goes down, PS and Sony will be fine but if Mario goes down, Nintendo goes down with it.

[just_looken]

@bad

Yes mario is way more popular but i am comparing 2 games that had level editors with the same style of gameplay but one was given 0 support the other like you said is a giant ip.

[CRASHBASHUK]

gosh sounds like the hack and exports were very bad then
i dont understand why "people find this fun"

[aaronaton]

Another franchise I totally forgot about... Cheers Jim!

[vTuro24]

I wish there was a law that forced companies to allow third party server solutions when first party no longer becomes available. It's not like the companies have anything to lose at that point. The fact that you can randomly lose access to something you paid for when the solution is literally right there is such bullshit.

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

And risk security of their platform to support a game that makes them no more money? Sony should hire you... If only to make a point of how stupid that idea is by firing you right after.

[Michiel1989]

most companies don't really bother if the community itself makes a 3rd party server, on pc at least. I'm not sure how difficult it is to make that kind of stuff happen for consoles and how Sony/MS would respond to it. I do know how nintendo would respond to it though

[MetroidFREAK21]

That's a big L on Sony

[BeHunted]

Why couldn't these developers just switch it to peer-to-peer servers?

[fsfsxii]

people in this topic are acting as if they were dedicated to this game and spent years playing it up until they shut it down.

[badboyz09]

I did great times

[InUrFoxHole]

I think people are just bummed out by the news. LBP was a huge deal for sony gamers. I remember when it 1st came out. A lot of gamers grew up playing sack boy so I get it.

[P_Bomb]

What happened?! Some kinda technical difficulty? Not the end I would’ve wished for.

I was on LBP since the beta, where the calculator was born, heh. Made a couple levels, then got to see my kids do co-op, which was great. Losing all those legacy levels is such a downer. 😞

[jznrpg]

Loved the game but I haven’t played it in a very long time. I’m sure some do but not enough to keep paying for servers apparently. Maybe someday it comes back.

People complain Sony does to many remasters but then complain they kill off IP. If games don’t make money they move on just the way it goes

[XiNatsuDragnel]

That sucks i hope fans can make a backup server on PC

[Jingsing]

So paying PS+ for multiplayer doesn't keep servers alive for first party games.. interesting.