LittleBigPlanet Servers

Have you ever used a Playstation 3? What is one game you would always stay up late at night to play? Uncharted, Bioshock, Call of Duty? What about LittleBigPlanet?
What is LIttleBigPlanet? LittleBigPlanet (LBP), is a puzzle and creative platform created by Media Molecule and now owned by Sumo Digital on the PS3 and the PS4. It consists of having an online platform where users can do the following: Play, Create, and Share. Just like Social Media, individual creations, known as levels, have their own “like button” and “follow” button, known as Hearts. The servers in question would stand up for about 13 years, amazing!
A majority of people may remember playing this game back in the early 2010s. I mean, I sure do! I still play it to this day.

However, this article isn’t about reminiscing about this game, it’s about the Online User-Generated Content Servers (GSC), and what’s happened to them since late February of 2021.

The Beginning: February was just a normal month in the LittleBigPlanet (LBP) Community. New levels were being published, users were communicating via their own profile comments, and all was well. 

On February 18th, users, including myself, found out that their levels, as well as locked ones, had a score of merely 2 million in their level scoreboard. Even on levels with NO Score Bubbles (In-game score points shaped as bubbles) in them! What!?

Reddit post asking about the notice of 2 million points.

Who is doing the 2 million score event, and how?
WHO?  

It was not the Developers of the game of course, but a common modified account under the username DISCORD_JXTUR6C. (The account would lead to a Discord server full of LBP moderators if you typed in the link starting with discord.gg, which may or no longer be available. It’s unknown who runs the account, individual or group.) 

HOW? 

Average score points usually don’t go far as to 2 million, perhaps the highest would be up to 50,000. It can’t be a bug, but rather a custom script. Is the script harmful? The script appears to be harmless, simply putting 2 million points and that’s it. Though harmless, it is still very bothersome to users.

Going into March, everything seemed fine outside of the 2 billion score event. However, a few days into March, users began to report problems with the servers. They reported not being able to connect, online content not loading, as well as frequent outages. Word quickly went around that both PS3 and PS4 servers are possibly getting DDOsed.(Distributed Denial Of Service)
How did a platform such as LBP get DDOSed? A script was created where thousands of glitched levels were published so quickly that the servers didn't have the resources to take in so many levels at once. Worried about the situation, a hashtag on Twitter was created by YouTuber BlazingVictini in order to get the Developer’s attention. The hashtag was #SaveLBP.
A day after the hashtag was created, we got not just the developers of LittleBigPlanet, but independent developer studio collaborator Sony XDEV’s attention as well.

The official LittleBigPlanet account, Sony XDEV, and Sumo Digital’s tweets regarding the servers.

Awesome! Now, all we had to do was wait… 

As of March 31st, the servers had come back up! Users got on and got ready to have fun and  be introduced to the new rate limit for levels.
What is and was the rate limit for? Rate limiting is a technique to manage network traffic. It controls the rate of requests sent to the servers (Which the requests would be the levels in this situation). What it’s for was to add a “One level per minute” script to prevent server stress. Therefore, if you want to publish two levels or update your level a second after you publish, you would have to wait a minute to publish the second level or update.
30 minutes later after the relaunch, the servers go back down. What happened?

On April 2nd, the official LittleBigPlanets Twitter account tweets the following:
“We are still working on the LBP server issues. It’s taking us longer than we hoped but we are making progress and will update everyone as soon as we have more info. Thanks for being so patient :)”
So what did this mean? Why were the servers up at the end of March for only a short period of time? There is no “official” reason, but speculation points to Tests, specifically a “Stress Test”, used to see the certain amount of bandwidth the game’s servers could take in order to support a large quantity of users.
Unfortunately, as the mainline series (LittleBigPlanet 1-3) is showing signs of progress, one of the LBP Games, LBP PSVita, began to show similar problems that the main series experienced back in March. You guessed it, YouTuber, BlazingVictini came back to create the hashtag #SaveLBPVITA.
For a small period of time, there were simple tweets from the devs, reassuring users. 

As late April rolled around, servers finally came back on. Users had so many questions: What was the reason for them to be online? Are they finally up for good? Not quite. The Only reason for the servers being up was to test new security measures.
LittleBigPlanet Twitter stating the reason for the server uptime.

The Middle:
By May, the servers were up for a somewhat official reason. Users continued to publish content and communicate as if nothing happened. Over the course of a few weeks, users began to see new problems, one notoriously being the “North Pole” glitch, where levels migrate to the North Pole on a profile’s Earth. More issues included an Auto-Heart script being created.

Auto-Heart is where you go into a level, or look at it, and the script activates to heart the level, and sometimes, the creator. If you were to enter the level, it would automatically end. If you hit “Continue”, you would be stuck in the level until you closed out LBP.  Eventually, comments on profiles/levels stating: “I made this level for you”  from the same discord modded account crashed games. Very soon after the Devs tweeted that they were aware of what was going on, stating the issues as attacks.

Accounts that were commonly associated with the Auto-Heart Script from BlazingVictini’s May 20th Video.

A popular example of an Autoheart Script level. No, there’s no Tankman Outift. :(

The same modded account with the game crashing comment.

LittleBigPlanet Twitter explained that they were aware.

On May 21st, a scripted message showed up on the top of the user's screens. What started off as a humorous joke later turned into script abuse. Future custom message scripts began to show discriminatory/offensive comments (Colored with Red, Green, and Purple). Not only were users witnessing these comments, but scripts with auto heart levels were pushed to the top of the LBP3 Community Tab.

The humorous message.

Warning message regarding the Community Tab from the LittleBigHome Discord Server.
It was so harsh that the next day, May 22nd, the Devs took down the servers, following with this statement.
“LBP Server Update: Due to the severity of the recent attacks we have no other option than to temporarily disable the game servers. We do not take these attacks lightly especially when they target our loyal community members, Thanks for understanding.”

I’m certain it was a tough decision for users and the Devs, but it was the best option for the time being.

July-August: The servers were still down as they had been since May 22nd. Small 1-4 minute tests took place in July and silence preceded afterward. On August 11th, a new discovery emerged when users began to notice a new error message in LittleBigPlanet 3 and Vita. Instead of the classic “A problem occurred when attempting to connect to the LittleBigPlanet Servers (403)”, they would be greeted with an 0xffffffff code or an 0x80710a06 code.
What are these codes? The 0xffffffff code doesn’t necessarily mean anything, the game’s error message is just describing it has not found a return code. The 0x80710a06 code has been a code that’s been around for quite a long time, it just means that the provider of the certificate isn’t verified.

LittleBigPlanet 3’s error codes, along with Vita’s.

Other than these two error codes, speculation pointed to it being a sign that the servers were still being worked on via tests and change of codes, such as a new security certificate and changes to the Image CDN (Content Delivery Network).

The Ending.
September: On September 13th, the Devs make an announcement regarding the bittersweet return of the servers. Why bittersweet? Bitter being the PS3 servers for the mainline series would have to stay down for the safety of the environment the game holds, and sweet being the PS4 server makes a return.

LittleBigPlanet Server update announcing the return of just the PS4 servers.
The servers are finally back up after 3 months! What may come off as a disappointment for PS3 users, including myself, can, later on, be understandable. The Playstation 3 has quite old hardware to where jailbreaks and hacks are possible. We would have to note that developers might no longer be able to update older games, especially LittleBigPlanet. Regardless of a new update, for both PS3 and LBP Vita, hackers would find ways around the new security updates and fixes. The risk of it might be low, but never zero. We however appreciate the Devs for all of their hard work during this crazy time period.

So what now?
All that remains for the LBP UGC Servers are the PS4, and likely, PS5 version of LittleBigPlanet 3. Is it the end for LittleBigPlanet? Of course not! Despite the PS3 and Vita shutdown, we as a community don’t give up creating. Sure we might have to get ourselves a PS4/5 and get LBP3 if we really want to share on the platform and continue our journey, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have other platforms to share. LittleBigPlanet forever!