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After years of server issues, LittleBigPlanet 3 is being delisted

A sackboy with glasses pulling on green thread with another guy standing next to him.
Sony Interactive Entertainment

Cutesy, but ill-fated, platformer LittleBigPlanet 3 and all its DLC are being delisted by the end of October, its developers announced Tuesday. If you never got around to playing this 2014 gem, you have only a few weeks to get it before it’s gone.

The official X (formerly Twitter) account posted a message saying that the PlayStation 4 version of the nearly 10-year-old game now on the PlayStation Store will be removed on October 31. Current owners can still access it after it’s been removed, which includes those who acquired it through PS Plus back in 2017.

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“This is a friendly heads-up that if anyone in the community or any newcomers still wish to own a digital copy of LittleBigPlanet 3 or any LittleBigPlanet DLC currently available for purchase — this is your last chance to do so!” the post reads. “Thank you for your continued support and understanding.”

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An important update on LittleBigPlanet 3 (PS4) and LittleBigPlanet DLC on the PlayStation Store: pic.twitter.com/Nmm9e94DxD

— Sackboy: A Big Adventure | LittleBigPlanet (@LittleBigPlanet) October 8, 2024

This news comes after Eurogamer discovered the game would be leaving PlayStation Plus in September, despite being a first-party game published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

LittleBigPlanet 3 didn’t get great reviews at release in 2014. Digital Trends said it was “simultaneously too restrictive and too open-ended,” and it had a bunch of technical issues. Still, players continued to use the online servers to post characters, levels, and decorations — that is, until 2021 when most of the servers were shut down for good partially because of a series of DDOS attacks. Only PS4 users could access online functionality and any user-generated creations uploaded to other servers. Users could only access and play this content if it was stored locally, so potentially millions of levels might be lost forever.

However, those PS4 servers would go down “indefinitely” earlier this year because of “ongoing technical issues” caused in part by malicious mods. Basically, its official delisting was only a matter of time, as its user creation features are a huge part of the game’s appeal.

If you or your kids need more Sackboy in your life, and you don’t want to deal with all the risks that come with user-generated levels, you can also get 2020’s Sackboy: A Big Adventurea 3D platformer and co-op spinoff from the mainline LittleBigPlanet series. It’s available on PS4, PS5, and PC.

Carli Velocci
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
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