The extended online service outage for the LittleBigPlanet series is over, but only one version of the latest game will return.
LittleBigPlanet's official Twitter account announced that LittleBigPlanet 3 has just come back online with game update 1.27, bringing access back to "all 10,000,000+ community levels"created by players throughout the series. While all the levels have come back, all the individual games will not: online services for the original LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, the PS3 version of LittleBigPlanet 3, and LittleBigPlanet PS Vita have all been permanently shut down.
An update on the LittleBigPlanet server and online services: pic.twitter.com/vUrvHcZvIsSeptember 13, 2021
"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," the message explains.
The other games will still function offline, which means you can play their built-in story modes or official level pack DLC. Unfortunately, the "share" part of LittleBigPlanet's "Play, Create, Share" tagline will now be limited to LittleBigPlanet 3 on PS4.
While gaming companies do typically end online support for older games, in this case Sony was pushed to make the change by server attacks targeting LIttleBigPlanet community members. It may have been possible to update the older games to shore up their vulnerabilities, but with series creator Media Molecule busy on Dreams and LittleBigPlanet 3 studio Sumo Digital still supporting Sackboy: A Big Adventure among its other upcoming projects, that would likely be easier said than done.
Meanwhile, the creators of an animated series in Dreams are looking for crowdfunding to make more.
