he LittleBigPlanet servers are down yet again. After six weeks of issues, the LittleBigPlanet servers were finally up and running. However, via the official Twitter page, developer Media Molecule has confirmed that the servers have been attacked and therefore things must be shut down again temporarily.
The LittleBigPlanet servers were first shut down in mid-March due to a reported DDoS attack (Distributed Denial-of-Service), although this was not the confirmed reason at the time. It was a struggle to get things back online, but now it looks like the issues are back.
Even after the initial shutdown of the servers, the LittleBigPlanet servers were still offline over a month later. What is interesting is at the time Sony and Media Molecule were using non-specific terms such as "technical" and "server" issues to describe the problem, as opposed to saying that there was indeed some sort of DDoS attack. Now, it appears that the verbiage has changed.
Yesterday the @LittleBigPlanet page tweeted out that it was aware that the community was dealing with server issues and that it was investigating. Today, however, it changed its tone by saying that servers were temporarily being disabled due to the "severity of the recent attacks." It also claims that it does not take the attacks lightly. While working on fixing the server issues for about six weeks, Media Molecule thanked its fans for patience but did not seem to address the idea that there were attacks, even though that was widely reported. Now it looks like it is out in the open.
Along with the official tweets, the LittleBigPlanet page on Reddit has some of the fans chiming in on what the issue may be about. Apparently, hackers have been able to make error messages appear in-game, and they are choosing to relay offensive content. Especially with a series like LittleBigPlanet that is geared towards children and being family-friendly, this is something that is very important to tackle head-on.
This is certainly not the first time that the gaming community has been hit hard with attacks of this kind, as Respawn Entertainment has been considering legal action against DDoS attackers and hackers recently, for example. It is important to try to protect the community as much as possible. In the case of LittleBigPlanet, the hope is that the servers can be cleaned up so that no one can get in them again, and whoever keeps breaking in can be stopped for good.
LittleBigPlanet 3 is available now on PS3 and PS4.