On August 24th, 2025, the LBP Union Protectors hosted the Sweet 16 State of the Union Address ahead of the Union’s 16th anniversary. This post will cover the highlights of the event. Below you will see a transcript of the address given by Lead Protector m88youngling. This post will later be updated with highlights from the Q&A portion of the event once those details are available.
We are proud to announce that new users will soon be able to register for Beacon without a PlayStation 3 on August 27th! Please stay tuned for more updates and instructions on the sign-up flow.
Recording of the Address
Thank you for your patience as we work on presenting a recording of the address in the best format that we can.
State of the Union Address
On August 27th, LBP Union turns 16. We looked very different in the beginning. The Union’s founders knew they wanted to help this community, but nobody could quite figure out how. First it was about H4H. Then it was about being a platform for organizations to cooperate. Today, we’re a platform for the entire community. While we’ve come a long way, there are still endless possibilities ahead of us, and we need to know how to get there.
Now that LBP Union is 16, I think we’re eligible for a driver’s permit now. We’re driving toward a more connected online community for LittleBigPlanet in a post-shutdown era. Yet, the road is a mess. Potholes suck, and we’ve hit a lot of them. It turns out the game we’ve all loved since we were kids is a security nightmare. I pasted AI-generated firewall rules and broke Beacon for a few hours. RPCS3 signups have been disabled for far longer than we anticipated.
Despite the bumps in the road, our community has accomplished a lot this year. This year we’ve welcomed new Protectors: Ryan as our Minister of Inspiration and Kubac as our Minister of Relations. I deeply appreciate Ryan’s attention to detail as we work to curate and highlight the best community levels that Beacon has to offer, especially as Reconnected wraps up this coming month. Kubac’s attention to our growing social media presence has been invaluable. I’m so happy to see we now have the most comprehensive PS3 patching tutorial for Beacon on YouTube thanks to Kubac’s efforts. I’m also very proud to see new interim leadership as well for our Peacekeeper team with Butter and SPN taking the helm as Interim Captain and Senior Lieutenant respectively. Moderating LittleBigPlanet’s largest Discord server is no small feat, and they have done an exceptional job managing the team that keeps us safe.
There are other leaders I owe my thanks. Yuki and Butter’s leadership over the Starguard team has made Beacon the safest community for LittleBigPlanet fans everywhere. I also want to extend appreciation to Fetetra and Porkchop, who have helped support Beacon users like you through their efforts with the Union Space Corps.
I am so appreciative of all the hard work put in by everyone on this team, and I am so thankful that our team is so appreciative of one another. I’ve heard thanks to Porkchop for supporting the Union Space Corps in its efforts to make the process of providing support to Beacon users as frictionless as possible. I’ve heard great appreciation for HardestLevels for their dedication toward keeping scores on Beacon as fair as possible. I’ve also heard appreciation for Knstis for his support for both the Union Space Corps and the Creative Works Administration. The interim Peacekeeper team leadership would also like to recognize SaviorOfEdge and Swolentongue for their vigilance and helpfulness. We’ve also seen many new team members recently, like Timthewarrior, Nekter, SaviorOfEdge, Knstis, and many more. I am so proud that LBP Union is a place where people who have a passion for this community can work together to make that community even better.
LBP Union has made a lot of progress this year toward becoming a better team. I am grateful that this year we have made an effort to make our team more collaborative and communicative. As our team gets bigger, making sure that everyone has a voice is a necessity. This year, team members can create tickets to talk to the Protectors about topics that concern them, and we’ve made an effort to encourage team members to share their ideas and thoughts.
Being 16 isn’t the end goal. We’re not perfect. We have to start thinking about what comes next. What are we going to be in the next few years and beyond? How are we going to be a place where the community can come together and express their love and passion for this game?
To start, I have very exciting news for our folks playing on PC. We need to bring back RPCS3 sign-ups for Beacon. Beacon is for everyone, whether you’re on real hardware or not. That’s why I’m very excited to tell you that starting on our 16th anniversary, Wednesday August 27th, we are officially reopening registration for RPCS3 users on Beacon! There’s still a lot more that we have left to do, like updating tutorials and telling you more about how the sign-up flow will work, but we’re all so excited to get you back online. Please keep an eye on our announcement channels to hear more. Thank you all for your patience!
We also want to see and support the porting of Patchwork over to LBP Vita, and I’m sorry to say that Vita isn’t ready yet. Although there’s not many of us, I have been missing playing LBP Vita on Beacon, and I know you have been too. One of our most beloved team picks on Beacon is Mountain of the Denim God by Sackboy_power754, and I’d love to hop back on and play it again.
Eventually Project Lighthouse isn’t going to be enough to power our community. We need to be forward thinking if we are to keep all your creative minds connected. We are considering our options for, in the farther future, migrating to newer server software like the work in progress Huge Spaceship, Refresh, or software that doesn’t yet exist to power the server. We are particularly concerned about security, scalability, performance, and continuity in the long term.
More importantly though is the game client. Today, we can’t afford to use Dive In or play with people we don’t trust because of remote code execution in the game itself. Someday, I hope we learn to solve that problem. Once that’s achieved, join keys can become optional.
The LittleBigPlanet community has come a long way since the game launched in 2008, and LBP Union has come a long way since it was founded as a playground club of kids in 2009. I am so proud to be celebrating yet another year of LBP Union, and I’m looking forward to celebrating many more with all of you.
Q&A
The Q&A portion has yet to be published. Thank you for your patience as we work on presenting highlights.
