Sony is officially delisting all LittleBigPlanet content on the PlayStation Store.
The official LittleBigPlanet Twitter account shared this message:
“Last Chance to Purchase LittleBigPlanet 3 (PS4) and LittleBigPlanet DLC from the PlayStation Store
After 10 years of playing, creating, and sharing content in LittleBigPlanet 3, the game and our entire range of LittleBigPlanet DLC will be removed from the PlayStation Store on October 31st, 2024.
Anyone that currently owns or purchases LittleBigPlanet 3 or any LittleBigPlanet DLC before it is delisted for sale, will still be able to access their purchased games and content after its removal.
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!
Thank you for your continued support and understanding.”
The Media Molecule Twitter account, in turn, shared a message of their own:
“LittleBigPlanet shaped us as a studio & remains an important part of who we are. We are & always will be forever grateful for it & the incredible community it has inspired.”
Media Molecule successfully pitched LittleBigPlanet to Sony, enabling them to get funding to start their studio, and launch a 16 year old platformer franchise with creation and online sharing mechanics built into the game. While the franchise has been modestly successful, it never truly rose to the level of its peers, like The Last of Us or God of War.
In 2021, most LittleBigPlanet servers, across different PlayStation platforms, were shut down due to technical issues. In April of this year, Sony chose to shut down the servers that had remained, for LittleBigPlanet 3 on PlayStation 4.
So today’s announcement marks the effective end of the LittleBigPlanet franchise. While Sony did not close the window completely, they have not hinted or shown interest in making such games with its “create, build, and share” ethos. We may instead see future Sackboy platformers, that don’t have any creation elements, or future cameos in other games, such as the recently released Astro Bot.
Sony has maintained their promise to keep PlayStation 3’s and Vita’s online stores even to this day. However, it was naïve for gamers to consider that as a permanent win for game preservation. Those stores instead experienced a gradual degradation, as games were slowly delisted in the succeeding years. Subsequently, many of the games that have online functionality closed their servers, or worse, no longer have useful servers, as too few people play to make use of them.
In this regard, Sony’s approach to game development and preservation has lost out to Microsoft’s.
Microsoft invested in a far reaching backwards compatibility program that only fell short with games and content that they could no longer license. If you had Xbox consoles and you were keeping up with the news, you would have most likely already made arrangements to keep playing your older games on these newer platforms.
Furthermore, when Microsoft secured their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, one of the first things they were able to do was bring back the servers for Call of Duty games on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Those servers will allow them to play even those Xbox 360 Call of Duty games, on three generations of Xbox consoles, even now that the Xbox 360’s online store has been closed.
While it’s sad for LittleBigPlanet players that their favorite game may have been quietly retired, it should also be food for thought that they didn’t get the options that Xbox owners did. But that should be something for PlayStation, and also Nintendo, to reflect on in the way they plan out their games and consoles in the future.
