All LBP user content to be free at launch

By Robert Purchese Published 21 July, 2008

Sony says money talk was premature.

Sony Europe has told Eurogamer that all user-generated content in LittleBigPlanet will be free at launch.

The publisher was clarifying comments made by David Reeves to PS3 Fanboy. He said you will be able to make money by selling your LBP creations using an "iTunes meets eBay" system, and even teased that we may see someone become a millionaire off the back of it.

"SCEE and Media Molecule can guarantee that all consumer-generated content will be free at launch. We know how important this is to the LBP community and what we want most is for people to enjoy playing, creating and sharing their content," Sony told Eurogamer.

"Obviously, we're also excited about the future and David was talking about how user-generated content could potentially evolve in the long term. Any decisions that are taken to evolve LBP in the future, will include the community and focus purely on enhancing the user experience."

LittleBigPlanet was one of the stand-out successes at E3 last week; Tom dribbled and drooled over the game during his hands-on play test.

LittleBigPlanet is due out exclusively on PS3 this October.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • asphaltcowboy #1 4 years ago

    'at launch'

  • Killerbee #2 4 years ago

    Very sensible.

    Things is, I can see it being quite hard to change the free model to a pay one - if there's that much free content available it's going to be hard persuading people to fork out money for certain bits of it. Plus there's always the possibility that someone else will just replicate the premium content and post it up for free...

  • Pedrolot #3 4 years ago

    @ asphaltcowboy

    'at launch'



    Exactly, could be a promotional thing?

    Although i doubt it.

  • Darkedge #4 4 years ago

    be charging for it after a reasonable honeymoon period. Like 24 hours most likely ;)

  • alimokrane #5 4 years ago

    Wait a minute ??? what kind of user generated content will be at launch when the game has just launched ??? am I missing somethin here ?
    Edited by 1 at 21/07/08 @ 17:54

  • the_dudefather #6 4 years ago

    makes sense, think the idea is that high profile level creators will be able to qualify for this selling thing in the future, and that can't really happen until they make some levels first ;)

    I can imagine the selling idea being a giant headache for sony, would you buy the levels in game? via the PSN store? how well would it work across regions (given SCEE's online track record)?

  • CunningLinguist #7 4 years ago

    I think what he meant to say is that it will be free from the day it launches. Although the wording he used could easily be interpreted as: free at launch, then who knows. And in all reality who knows, if it picks up then I'm sure they'll want to make money off it, if it doesn't then they save themselves the embarrassment.

  • CrumpledPaper #8 4 years ago

    Anything that's free will always be free. Even Reeve's said that he was thinking of a system where some limited set of high-end people would be given THE CHOICE to make their FUTURE work premium.

    It all sounded a bit pie-in-the-sky anyway, and this clarification confirms it was just him speculating on the longer term.
    Edited by 1 at 21/07/08 @ 18:33

  • paulf #9 4 years ago

    content could be free but could be surrounded by ads - will be interesting to see how this pans out

  • ShiftyGeezer #10 4 years ago

    @ Killerbee -
    if there's that much free content available it's going to be hard persuading people to fork out money for certain bits of it. Plus there's always the possibility that someone else will just replicate the premium content and post it up for free...It's no different in principle to game creation in general. Why do people pay for professional games when there are loads of free games on the Internet? Because you get a better quality experience. What's to stop people copying levels? If a level took 50 hours to make, who's going to want to invest that much time and give it away free (ignoring copyright issues. I'm sure if Sony are vetting and approving commercial levels, they won't allow clones to be presented free)? Why has no-one created a PixelJunk Monsters clone for PC and given it away free of charge? Why are all the freebie Tower Games pretty rubbish looking on the whole? Because it takes a lot of work to make something good, and people needing to earn a living will tend not to invest that much effort for free.

    Creating anything of quality needs considerable effort. If people have the choice to buy into high quality goods, and reimburse the creators for their efforts, that can't be a bad thing IMO. We're all willing to buy content from official game developers, so what's different buying professional quality content from 3rd party developers? It's no different to buying professional 3rd party graphics plugins for Photoshop, even when there are plenty of free graphics plugins.

  • el_pollo_diablo #11 4 years ago

    Surely they're talking about stuff like special level sets devised by, say , the Ratchet and Clank or Ico devs?

    I think it's unlikely they'll charge *YOU* for levels that *I* have created, although I admit that it does read exactly like that.

  • Stuz359 #12 4 years ago

    Free at launch, then, if successful, a subscription service. Maybe I am just being cynical. My understanding was that it was supposed to be free full stop.

  • Bumhug360 #13 4 years ago

    "I think it's unlikely they'll charge *YOU* for levels that *I* have created, although I admit that it does read exactly like that."

    No you can charge for levels that you have created making you money, they will ofc get a slice of that pie

  • mkreku #14 4 years ago

    Maybe it will be like a donation system, where you're free to give a little tip to the creator of levels you've especially enjoyed? I think that would be only fair. Of course, you'd probably have to give a little tip to Sony too, if that were to happen..

  • Vixremento #15 4 years ago

    No no no...he meant "Free with lunch" at Robs place (the lunch is only $99 and includes a free water).

    I agree that I ain't gonna pay for other peoples levels if there are hundreds of free ones available (almost like paying for a HL2 or C&C map).

  • Son #16 3 years ago

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  • Son #17 3 years ago

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  • freedomplanet #18 2 years ago

    Very good site. I love computer games
    domain
    Edited by 1 at 08/09/09 @ 11:02