Sony and the LBP team announced today that online servers for LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet 3 (on PlayStation 3), and LittleBigPlanet for Vita will not be coming back online. Access to community created levels and online features for those games was initially shut off on May 22nd as a “temporary” measure to stop DDoS attacks and abuse that allowed users to display offensive text to online players. Apparently the fix was either too costly or too challenging to undertake, leading the LittleBigPlanet Twitter account to break the news earlier today at 10am EST:
Firstly, we would like to apologise for the extended downtime of the LittleBigPlanet server and want to thank you all for your patience whilst we worked on this issue. The good news is that we have just launched Game Update 1.27 and brought the LittleBigPlanet server (and all 10,000,000+ Community Levels!!) back online for PlayStation 4 users!
Unfortunately, we need to permanently shut down our online services for: LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet 3 (PS3) and LittleBigPlanet PS Vita.
We have no doubt that this news will come as a big disappointment to a lot of you, ultimately this is the best way to protect the LittleBigPlanet community and to help ensure that our online environment remains safe.
Thank you for being a wonderful community and for your continued love and support of all things Sackboy.
In a pair of replies the account answered a couple of burning questions: One, any previously published community content for the original three LittleBigPlanet titles on PlayStation 3 will still be accessible through LittleBigPlanet 3 on PlayStation 4. And Two, story mode and level pack DLC for the original three LittleBigPlanet titles on PlayStation 3 will still be available in single player and local co-op modes.
As expected, the LittleBigPlanet community hub at LBP.me will also not be coming back online after going down nearly a year ago without much explanation. In slightly better news, it appears that the backward compatible version of LittleBigPlanet 3 has resurfaced on PlayStation 5 after disappearing from the PlayStation Store shortly after the console’s launch. However, the game’s store page does state that there may be performance issues or missing features when playing the game on a PlayStation 5.
It’s great that the servers are back online and those 10+ million levels are mostly accessible in one way or another. But this has been a long and rough road for fans of the series, especially the older titles and the handheld spin-offs. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the news today.