LittleBigPlanet 3 fans furious at Sony betrayal as servers shut down permanently

LittleBigPlanet 3 cover — LittleBigPlanet 3 came out in 2014 (Picture: Sony)

This occurred with Super Mario Maker on the Wii U earlier this month, with the shut down of the console’s online services wiping millions of user-created levels from existence.

The same has now happened to LittleBigPlanet 3, only with no prior warning. Meaning the entire catalogue of fan-made levels across all three LittleBigPlanet games are no longer accessible.

In a statement, Sony announced the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers on PlayStation 4 will remain ‘offline indefinitely’ after they were ‘temporarily’ taken down in January this year.

‘Due to ongoing technical issues which resulted in the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers for PS4 being taken offline temporarily in January 2024, the decision has been made to keep the servers offline indefinitely,’ the statement reads. ‘All online services including access to other players’ creations for LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer available.

‘User generated content (UGC) stored locally on your PS4 will remain available. Any new UGC you create can be played on your PS4 but not shared. Offline features such as the campaign will remain playable.’

Sony previously shut down the PlayStation 3 servers for all three LittleBigPlanet games in 2021, with the PlayStation 4 version of LittleBigPlanet 3 becoming the only way to access user levels from all three titles. Now the PlayStation 4 version has gone offline, cutting off access to millions of levels entirely.

While it’s unclear how many levels were available in LittleBigPlanet 3 before the switch off, Sony claimed that 10 million levels had been created by 2017.

The abrupt shutdown has infuriated fans, especially as there’s been no LittleBigPlanet sequel on PlayStation 5 yet – outside of spin-off platformer Sackboy: A Big Adventure, which doesn’t have level creation tools.

One Twitter user wrote: ‘Damn that’s all we get? A tweet? Countless hours spent by the whole community to make tens of millions of levels that are now completely gone to be forgotten about, and all we get is a one-sentence-long tweet.’

Another added: ‘We need LittleBigPlanet 4.’

LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule confirmed it was working on a new game last year, although it’s unclear if it is another entry in the series. The studio was hit by layoffs in October, after they ended support for their most recent game, Dreams.

While there’s calls for another LittleBigPlanet from the community, it’s unclear whether there’s much demand beyond that – although Sackboy did, somewhat bafflingly, place fifth in a Bafta poll of the most iconic video game characters of all time.