Jake Brigstock
Apr 23, 2024
Bang Showbiz - Gaming / VideoElephant
A PlayStation exclusive has been taken offline with no warning to gamers who are now unable to access servers and years worth of player-made content.
LittleBigPlanet 3 was released in 2014 on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 but 10 years on, online servers and support have been shut down completely.
The LittleBigPlanet franchise is well-known for its focus on allowing players to create their own custom levels and share them within the community.
Players control a customisable character called Sackboy and take him through side-scrolling platform levels - in LittleBigPlanet 3, three new characters were added with their own unique features and abilities; Oddsock, Toggle and Swoop.
The community levels provided hours and hours of fun after the credits rolled on the main campaign and even helped to get some of those elusive trophies that otherwise would have been really difficult to get solely through the story.
But now these levels seem to have gone forever; one social media user said there were "more than 10 million levels".
A statement said: "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.
"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."
It's quite common for online servers on older games to be shut down - they are costly to run, maintain and update with developers then putting that additional resource into more contemporary titles.
But that didn't stop players from taking to social media to vent their sadness, anger and frustration.
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