We are proud to announce that after several months of downtime, Beacon was brought back online on June 17th! To celebrate the return of LittleBigPlanet’s most popular custom server, we’re kicking off our yearly creative contest: LBP Reconnected 2025! Read on to learn more about how you can win a team pick and the rare Reconnected Crown costume piece.
How to Get Back Online
Before you can participate in the LBP Reconnected 2025 contest, you’ll need to get back on LittleBigPlanet online. To do that, you’ll need to do a quick patch that installs the Patchwork security plugin. This community developed plugin mitigates the risk of the force-join exploit that resulted in us shutting down service a few months ago.
You can find up to date tutorials for your platform of choice on our Beacon landing page. As of the writing of this post, only the PlayStation 3 tutorial is up to date. RPCS3 is supported, but a tutorial is forthcoming. Patchwork is still being developed for PlayStation Vita.
What is LBP Reconnected 2025?
LBP Reconnected 2025 is a creative contest hosted by LBP Union, the organization that operates LittleBigPlanet’s most popular custom server, Beacon. The contest was originally started in 2021 to celebrate the return of the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers for PlayStation 4. We’ve been hosting the contest ever since to celebrate custom servers for the community and to encourage creators to give it their all!
As described last year, the contest is a reminder that the community isn’t defined by any one server, but rather by people like you who love LBP and want to share that love and imagination with the world. Although events might ‘disconnect’ us, we will always be ‘reconnected’ by the ingenuity of the community.
LBP Reconnected 2025 Contest Details
First, we’ll talk about the timeline. Then, we’ll discuss the criteria, prizes, and theme.
Timeline
The contest begins today in July, and ends September 30th. Judging will conclude sometime in October, and prizes distributed as fast as possible.
Winners and Prizes
There can be up to four winners for this contest. There is some nuance here, so please be mindful of a few caveats to this. Firstly, there is no guarantee that all platforms will be supported by the new Patchwork security plugin by the time the contest submissions close. Winners will be eligible to receive a team pick, an exclusive role in our Discord server, and the rare Reconnected Crown costume piece in game!
As of the writing of this blog post, LittleBigPlanet Vita is not yet supported by the Patchwork plugin. This means that there is a chance that community developers may not have the plugin finished by the time submissions close. That means you may not be able to properly publish your level to Beacon in time. The remaining three games should be supported.
We will choose one winner from each available game so long as the submission meets our minimum standard of quality and other criteria mentioned in this article.
Theme
Our theme this year is Blast to the Past. You might consider warping the player back in time to a historical time period. Maybe you adventure through the wild west? Perhaps they take some future technology with them that aids in their survival? Maybe the player accidentally changes the course of history and has to correct things before the timeline breaks down? The fate of history rests in your hands!
Some ideas:
- In Back to the Future Part III, the cast finds themselves in the old wild west, bringing some technology from the future with them. Try thinking of something similar.
- Pompeii is the site of one of the most famous volcanic disasters in history. Maybe the player is transported here and has to somehow survive the eruption (maybe be a bit more creative than a bomb survival of course!).
- The player is whisked away to traditional China with a hoverboard and challenged to collect a number of hidden Mahjong tiles before the time runs out.
Criteria & Rules
Here are important rules you must follow in order to participate in Reconnected 2025.
- Submissions will be judged based on a number of factors, including alignment with the contest theme (see previous section), visual quality, gameplay, and originality.
- Level title should contain the hashtag “#Reconnected2025” and be submitted on our custom server, Beacon. You may upload the level to other servers if you wish, but we can only judge levels uploaded to Beacon.
- You must sign up prior to submitting to help us distribute prizes or contact you about your submission.
- Your level should have gameplay. It should not be a video or a gallery.
- Please follow Beacon’s Terms of Service.
- Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
- You must submit your level before the deadline listed in the timeline section. If you edit your level after the deadline, you will be disqualified. Feel free to edit your level again after the winners have been selected.
- You may work as a team if you wish, but only the person uploading the level is eligible to win prizes.
- Please do not feature any real individuals or personas in your level. All characters should be fictional.
- You may only make one submission.
Please note: we reserve the right to withhold winnings from levels that don’t meet a minimum standard of quality or alignment with the contest theme.
Sign Up for Reconnected 2025
Before you can submit, we ask that you please sign up for Reconnected 2025 so that we can contact you about your submission. This helps us contact you in case we notice a problem and makes it easier for us to award prizes.
To sign up for Reconnected 2025, you have two options:
- Sign up on Discord (recommended): this allows us to award you with the exclusive Reconnected role if you win the contest and is the easiest way for us to contact you if needed.
- Sign up via email: this is an alternative if you prefer not to use Discord. This uses a Google Form where you provide us with your email address so that we can contact you if needed. Signing up via email means that you will not receive a Discord role if you win the contest.
Option 1: Sign Up on Discord (Recommended)
To sign up for Reconnected 2025 on Discord, follow these steps:
- Join our Discord server.
- Visit the #contest-submissions forum channel. You may need to enable it in the Channels & Roles view.
- Create a new post in the forum channel tagged ‘work in progress’ with the title of your submission.
- In the post, list your Beacon account name.
- Optional: feel free to show off anything you’ve already done in here too if you’d like!
When you have published your level, it makes it easier for us if you change the tag on your post to Submitted, but we can take care of this during the judging process if you forget.
Option 2: Sign Up Via Email
This is not required if you already signed up via Discord. This is an alternative if you prefer not to use Discord. To sign up via email, please use the sign-up form linked below.
Good Luck!
We’re so excited to see you all back online and to see what awesome creations you have up your sleeves. Please let us know on our Discord server if you have any questions about the contest. Happy creating!
