Sony has confirmed that LittleBigPlanet 3 servers on PlayStation 4 will be offline “indefinitely” following issues with the service from earlier this year.
The company updated fans with bad news in one updates on its website (through Game deleted), explaining that the temporary server shutdown in January will now take effect for the foreseeable future. It's a decision that means millions of user-created levels will no longer be accessible to new players. Sony cited “ongoing technical issues” as the reason for its decision to discontinue support.
Creative content that has been stored locally on a player's device can still be accessed locally, and users can still freely create content and play it while disconnected from the server. PlayStation also guides LittleBigPlanet fans through offline features if they want to continue playing in some form.
As players eventually flock to new experiences, the game is expected to lose touch with certain online features in the years following its release. However, the lack of server access to the LittleBigPlanet games is a particularly big loss as they are famous for their plethora of player-generated content such as levels and costumes. LittleBigPlanet 3 even allows players to enjoy user-generated levels from the previous two entries.
PlayStation 3 players lose access to that content when Sony moves to close PS3 servers for LittleBigPlanet 1, 2, and 3 in 2021, and now the PS4 version of the third game suffers the same fate. With the servers down indefinitely, it means there's no official way to view the content players have created since the original LittleBigPlanet launched in 2008. LittleBigPlanet 3 launches for PS3 and PS4 in 2014.
It's impossible to know exactly how much user-generated content has made its way into the game since its release, but in February 2017, more than seven years ago, Sony boasted that the game has more than 10 million levels. It's unclear exactly how many people were lost today.
Thankfully, LittleBigPlanet 3 isn't completely unplayable without its servers. While the now-lost content library was the first to launch, players can still download and enjoy its story mode, which, Our review, we estimate the deals will last about seven to eight hours of fun. We gave the Sony installment of Sumo Digital a 6.8 upon release, calling it “a beautifully designed game with a great creative toolset, LittleBigPlanet 3 is let down by co-op and the error was unimaginable.”
Michael Cripe is a freelancer for IGN. He started in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets like The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
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