LittleBigPlanet has brought us all together for many reasons. It has been suggested that LBP is the greatest game ever because of its infinite creative possibilities, and its power to connect people. LBP has a reputation for being wholesome, and safe for all ages. The community is growing, by many measures.. but also it is shrinking in some valuable areas - long-term publishers are leaving the game due to abuse from the community. As any experienced LBP'er knows, LBP is vulnerable for player privacy & safety. Many of the utilities for a player's self-defense are at best.. ineffective.

The time has come for the LittleBigPlanet community to take a stand against trolls, bullies, stalkers, and various other forms of harassment. There have been such extremes of death threats, hate speech, stalking, hacking, cyber-bullying, etc. Many within the LBP community feel there is nowhere to turn for help.

The LittleBigPlanet community has been suffering for a very long time for the lack of moderation and privacy for the players. Many creators find themselves subjected to constant abuse from other players in-game with absolutely no options for their own self-defense. Reporting the abuse usually results in no action taken whatsoever. If the offending players are banned, they can easily just create another account to return to the same behavior without any consequences. Deleting comments & reviews only results in being further harassed by the offending player. Disabling comments & reviews only cuts the creators off from the community - which really seems more like a punishment for the victim of the abuse instead of a self-defense tactic.

The players are tired of seeing updates to the game for DLC and minor functionality changes when there is NO PLAN for adding a block/ignore feature for our individual privacy. When our best and brightest creators LEAVE THE GAME due to abuse from the community, we have a collective problem, and it is quite serious.

If you are at all concerned that the quality of the "Cool Pages" has gone down in recent months, you may be enlightened to know that not only are there players that use spam tactics & flood the pages with copied levels, several of our best creators have left the game because it is no longer worthwhile to them to share their hard work with a community that subjects them to nothing but hateful negativity for their reward.

The simplest solution to end harassment AND fix the cool pages is to allow us to block individual players in-game. No more action needs to be taken than to give us the tools to control our privacy, and to protect ourselves from those who would seek to exploit the LBP Imagisphere for their own gain.

It is time to ask that action be taken to make the community a safer place for all of us by enabling us to block individual players. If we could block the players that harass us, there would be less need for improved moderation - we could silence the abusers on our own. Bottom line, the community deserves better than bullies, trolls, haters, stalkers, and worse. We should be able to block those who abuse the privilege they have to play such a wonderful game.

The first step: Sign this petition to make sure those currently in charge of maintaining LBP understand how serious this problem is for all of us.

The next (optional) step: Every time you encounter a bully, whether it was happening to YOU or not, remember that it is a problem for everyone that plays LBP that we can't block those bullies. Let the Community Manager know about it:

steven@littlebigplanet.com (send a copy to spaff@mediamolecule.com)
If you feel frustrated by any lack of response (as I was, and have been for 6 months now) - European LBP community members may take up their case with PEGI, and file a report - http://www.pegionline.eu/en/index/id/264

It is the responsibility of those who created the game, and those who currently maintain the game to protect the players:

"Community standards for online subscribers

Links