AeroRant #294 – Media Molecule Nuked My Levels

By Richard Windsor | November 5, 2008

I have been having a love hate week with Little Big Planet. While the game is very addictive and fun, it suffers from a lot server issues alongside a bunch of building glitches that can make you want to tear sackboy a new one. My latest gripe is that today I get a message that my levels have been moderated and that I can no longer post levels to the community. I have not made any pornographic levels, nor have I made anything in a mean spirit. This may be my last straw with this game!

I booted up today and two of my levels had been taken down. They deleted my Election level, which had over 20,000 plays and had been hearted a lot. I can almost understand them taking that one down because of the use of images, but it still hurts. The one I don’t understand is my Object Creation Station level. This was just a bunch of objects that I have made in which you can collect them all for personal use. This level did not use any copyrighted materials at all. When I tried to republish any of my levels I found myself locked out of publishing any new levels at all.

I have had a lot of fun with LBP, but this latest issues is just one of many that I have had that have turned me off of this game. I don’t build small levels, and that means I invested a lot of time in making the ones I did. If Media Molecule and Sony are going to stifle things like this then I can no longer promote this game. I know I sound bitter and jaded, but I really liked playing this game, if I cannot get my content back I guess that I will trade in the game towards my next purchase.

UPDATE: After doing some research I found out that a ton of levels have been deleted from the LBP community. Anything with a licensed character or picture will be taken down. I guess I underestimated the amount of copyright issues the game would have. This for me is now definitely the last issue I am willing to put up with for this game. I know this is not Sony’s or Media Molecules fault, but the deletion of these levels and the strict rules take 80% of the fun factor out of this game…for me at least. Instead of just trading this game in, maybe I will give away my copy with another aerocontest. Keep an eye out for an announcement of how you can win my copy of the game.