16 Years of Gaming History are About to be Lost Forever

Why does this matter?

From the outside, this might look like a typical server shutdown and delisting for an online game, but the scale of this shutdown and delisting is unprecedented and sets a deadly precedent for the future of video game preservation.

Community-run preservation efforts do exist, but they are incomplete and missing many creations. Additionally, their legal status is in the gray. But when LittleBigPlanet 3 is delisted from all storefronts October 31st, it will be fully illegal for future generations to experience the community LittleBigPlanet helped foster.

LittleBigPlanet was not just a game where players created and shared levels, it was (and was even marketed as) an entire online content platform where players could create movies, paintings, songs, and even entire video games inside of LittleBigPlanet. This shutdown is more equivalent to if itch.io or other indie game marketplaces were to be killed without warning.

In addition to the scale of this shutdown being unprecedented, players and creators, players were given zero warning the servers would shut down, and were instead told repeatedly that the servers would return online. As a result, creators were never given a chance to save their art on their own terms.

If the servers can’t run forever, what can Sony do to make it right?

Running game servers are expensive, and even as a multi-billion dollar corporation, it is not realstic to expect Sony to run servers that can potentially cost millions of dollars a day for a game that hasn’t gotten any major new updates in several years. What we are instead calling on Sony to do is to provide a public archive of all LBP content, so that players and/or external organizations can take preserving and maintaining this into their own hands.

There have been multiple different ways people online have suggested Sony takes this approach, all of which are valid options to do right by the community and for the greater gaming industry.

  • Providing an archive to a preservation organization or museum

  • Keeping the resource servers (the servers that store player content) running, but keeping the gameplay servers offline

  • Providing standalone downloadable DLC via the PlayStation Store akin to the existing level pack DLCs

  • Reinstating the servers temporarily for 90 days to allow players a chance to save their content one last time

How you can help

  • Share the petition across all of your socials

  • Email, message, or call news outlets, and tell them how this is one of, if not the largest attack on game preservation in history

  • Reach out to game preservation organizations

  • Speak with your local digital media museums for support

  • Ask your local retro video game stores to spread the message

  • Keep the conversation going online with #SaveLBP

  • Ask your favorite YouTubers, streamers, etc for support

  • Share images, videos, and stories about your favorite lost creations

  • Share ideas on how to help save LBP’s rich history in /r/LittleBigPlanet

A very important note to add: Please do not harass the developers; many of them have publicly come out on X/Twitter to state their support for us. This shutdown is the fault of Sony, not the wonderful people who created and maintained this platform.