LittleBigPlanet (Series) | User Created Content Offline Permanently

[Moonface]

The only downside is the levels that simply don't function in LBP3. I don't know if you recall @ShiraNoMai when I played a level that was pirate themed and it tanked the frame rate down to below 10fps, despite the level being from LBP1 and functioning without that fps drop on a PS3. That's just a testament to the issues that plague LBP3 and now that it's the only way to play online, Sumo should really patch the game up. Apparently the servers were attacked in the first place because the person responsible was upset with how Sony were handling the LBP IP (similar to the attacks happening to Titanfall 2's servers) and although they scored an own goal with the outcome of the servers, I hope that leaving LBP3's issues unresolved doesn't cause further upset that pushes someone to drastic actions again.

[Oblivion Knight]

I don't know why, but I don't feel I've been able to fully embrace LBP.. I've played it in patches and have quite enjoyed it, but it quickly goes back into the pile and collects dust for another 6 months or so.

Thankfully I'd already got all of the multiplayer trophies done in the first game before the servers went down.. It seems like a bit of a shame that I won't get to experience LBP2 since many feel it's the best one, but I'm also hearing good things about Sackboy so perhaps all is not lost.

..and if that rumour about the servers being attacked as some kind of protest about the handling of the IP is accurate, there's really no hope!

[Moonface]

LBP2 definitely has the best single player mode, which the servers won't affect except for playing it online with others, but I don't know if you'd even find anyone playing the campaign these days even if the server was up since the game is so old.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure is very good and worth checking out if you like platformers.

[Moonface]

LittleBigPlanet Servers Will Remain Offline Indefinitely

Ugh, what an utterly awful way for this series to go. The servers have been suffering with problems for a few years now due to hackers, and I guess they finally found a way to do enough damage to stop the servers being put back online. That means every single user created level ever made across LBP1, LBP2, and LBP3 is now inaccessible except for anything that gets scraped and put onto the private servers that exist for emulated or jailbroken versions of the game.

Between this and Mario Maker, I hope game companies just abandon the whole UGC genre. The only platform it works with is PC because most games that do it on there make user generated content exist as downloads rather than content locked onto official game servers, so it's far less likely for all that stuff to just disappear in one go like it does for console games. I definitely can't see a UGC genre game succeeding on consoles again in the wake of this because why would anyone bother to invest their time and effort into making something that gets held hostage on official servers and unceremoniously nuked when the end comes?

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah unfortunately, leaving servers in uncertain hands leaves any UGC-type game in permanent limbo status; just always at the mercy of their hosters. Things like Minecraft have the benefit of a self-host, which is still at the mercy of a server owner, but if you yourself can be such an owner, then its existence lies solely on your ability to upkeep it. Unfortunately for companies like MM or Nintendo, there's a cost-benefit to maintaining and even just keeping them up in the first place while 1) user-base is practically zero and/or 2) maintaining/safeguarding actively is just not worth the hassle it involves.

[Moonface]

Things like Minecraft have the benefit of a self-host, which is still at the mercy of a server owner, but if you yourself can be such an owner, then its existence lies solely on your ability to upkeep it.

In most cases, custom Minecraft maps are made and then uploaded by the creator to sites like Planet Minecraft and such. Most creators would hopefully be uploading their content to multiple places so if one somehow goes down, their uploaded content isn't lost or resting on them keeping a copy of the save and re-uploading it.
For creative servers, in my experience the ones I've played on will provide a world download when the current world is retired and a fresh one is made to keep the map/file size down. Groups like HermitCraft will also put up a download of a world when its respective season ends, and I believe one time older world downloads for that group were lost but fortunately so many people had downloaded them that there were people in that community who had copies to provide.

Now that I think about it, the only LBP community levels that were preserved at all would be whatever ones were bundled into the GotY edition of LBP1. Sadly, that only amounts to a measly 18 levels when at the time of that release, there were already over 1 million levels uploaded.