Offline News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

LittleBigPlanet 3's PlayStation 4 servers have gone offline «indefinitely», erasing millions of user-created levels.

Earlier this year, Nacon generated some excitement with the latest teaser trailer for Terminator: Survivors, a new open-world adventure/survival game that takes place after Judgment Day in a post-apocalyptic setting. The game is apparently launching this year, but there are still plenty of outstanding questions, and thankfully, Nacon has stepped up to answer some of them.

The recently released TopSpin 2K25 is a fantastic tennis title, but the game's currently being blasted for its always online requirement. Yep, this is one of those games where you need a connection to the servers before you can actually play it — even if you just want to grind through career mode or enjoy a local match.

DanMachi – Memoria Freese, the RPG inspired by the hit anime Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is counting down to its final days. In Japan, that is, since the rest of us already saw it shut down on February 28th, 2024.

The developer of extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov says that everyone can have access to the controversial new mode that's locked behind a paywall - but only for six months.

If you want to play Escape from Tarkov offline with friends, it looks like it’s going to cost you. Developer Battlestate Games announced a new special edition of the game, called The Unheard Edition, on Thursday that comes with a lot of exclusive features and content, including an offline, co-op PvE mode, for $250.

Fallout 76’s online multiplayer nature firmly separates it from other games in the series.

LittleBigPlanet 3’s servers have been offline since January, leaving players unable to access player-created levels stored in the game’s archive. On Friday, developer Sumo Digital and publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the servers will stay offline indefinitely “due to ongoing technical issues.”

Mobile data plans can be tricky, and sometimes, even those unlimited ones aren't truly limitless. This inconvenience underscores the importance of having some entertaining mobile games that don't rely on a strong internet connection or gobble up data.

It's always sad to see a well-liked game completely shut down, especially when it was still being enjoyed by a handful of dedicated fans. That's exactly what happened with The Crew, an open world racing game that was released all the way back in 2015. Being a completely online title, once developer Ubisoft pulled the plug on the game's servers at the end of last month, it became completely unplayable for all owners.

LittleBigPlanet 3’s servers will remain offline permanently, Sony has confirmed. The servers first went down earlier this year as a temporary measure, due to technical issues. However, Sony has stated that due to the ongoing difficulties the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers will remain offline forever. This now means that there are now no LittleBigPlanet games online, which means players can no longer access the millions of levels that have been created over the years.

It's a bad time to enjoy platformers built on community level creations, as LittleBigPlanet 3 servers have shut down just a week after support for Wii U servers and Super Mario Maker were killed. But while Nintendo fans got to say goodbye to their game, the death of LittleBigPlanet came as a sudden shock.

LittleBigPlanet 3's servers are officially being taken offline "indefinitely", meaning that players will no longer have access to millions of user-created levels. R.I.P. to all the shark survival levels that made up my childhood, I'll miss you more than you know.

The stunning open-world dress-up game I covered a little under two years ago has finally announced an offline playtest, and I can't wait to see more of it. 

After the early access launch trailer, Moon Studios has now released the PC system requirements for the action RPG No Rest for the Wicked. There's a very big difference between minimum and recommended, to say the least.

Ubisoft’s online-only racing game The Crew stopped being operable on April 1. Some users are reporting, however, that things have gone a bit further. They say that the company actually reached into Ubisoft Connect accounts and revoked the license to access the game, according to reports by Game Rant and others.

If you're currently running into problems with Fortnite split screen not working, fear not! There is an official reason why this is happening.

Patch 10.2.7 PTR is now available for download, with datamining soon to follow. Although PTR servers are still offline, we can presume that playtesting will begin soon! We similarly have no information on exactly what will be available in this PTR test, and if it will include the newly revealed WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria event, but we should learn more soon!

The latest Destiny update is here, with Destiny 2: Into the Light bringing about new Crucible maps, a new three-player mode and a whole host of new weapons to unlock.

Blizzard has announced that its games are coming back to mainland China in summer 2024 after almost a year and a half off the market. Additionally, Microsoft (which now owns Blizzard) and NetEase have entered another separate agreement to bring NetEase games to Xbox and other platforms.

In February, we brought you word of a group of Google engineers who, apparently just for fun, managed to hack Sony's streaming PS Portal to run emulated PSP games offline. Being courageous White Hat types, the group «responsibly reported» the issues to Sony. The exploit was quietly fixed in patch 2.0.6, which also seems to have improved video quality significantly, despite neither being listed in the patch notes.

This week's shutdown of Ubisoft racing game The Crew has prompted the launch of a concerted effort to mount political and legal challenges to the increasingly common occurence of games you've bought becoming unplayable.

The latest PlayStation Portal update has supposedly addressed an exploit that allowed PlayStation Portable (PSP) games to be emulated natively on the streaming handheld.

Sony doesn’t consider Gran Turismo 7 to be a live service game, but developer Polyphony Digital treats it like it is one. The game goes from strength-to-strength with each new update, and while v1.44 is on the smaller side by the series’ standards, it adds more complimentary content to an already stacked simulation racer.

Every community-uploaded Super Mario Maker has officially been beaten ahead of the end of the game’s online functionality.

Popular Pokemon fan website Relic Castle, which has been running since 2014, has been taken offline after those in charge of it allegedly received a DMCA takedown notice. The website previously functioned as a forum for Pokemon fans to talk, as well as a place to share fan-made Pokemon games.

It's been almost 12 years since the first Dragon's Dogma dropped on PS3 and Xbox 360, and four years since the anime, but it's finally time to return to the world of the Arisen.

Update: Here we are, then: the inevitable apology tour. Aspyr has issued an update on its disastrous Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection launch, which can be purchased full-price on PS5 and PS4 right now. «At launch, we experienced critical errors with our network infrastructure,» a statement reads. «The result was incredibly high ping, matchmaking errors, crashes, and servers not appearing in the browser.»

Warner Bros. Games has been discussing its business strategy over the past several weeks, but it seems to be full of contradictions. Hogwarts Legacy, its AAA single-player Harry Potter game, was one of the top-selling games of 2023, but the company instead intends to focus on live-service and free-to-play games in the future, like its underperforming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. WB Games is reviving a game it took offline last year before unpublishing a suite of games that have been playable for years. That’s not to forget that the game that’s being revived, Super Smash Bros.-like brawler MultiVersus, features characters from several of Warner Bros.’ botched properties, like the Space Jam reboot, Black Adam, and a whole slate of Looney Tunes in the aftermath of Coyote vs. Acme.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das urges financial vigilance amidst AI cyber threats; panel explores AI ethics; AI system may aid future Alzheimer's drug synthesis; AI powered offline phone revolutionises access for visually impaired- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

There's a lot to love about PlayStation 5. The console has amassed an incredible catalog of games over the past few years, and since it supports most PS4 games, there are hundreds of great titles for you to check out. Sharing games nowadays isn't quite as easy as it was in the past, as most games are now digital — meaning you can give a physical disc to a friend after you beat the game or for them to test out over the weekend.

A former chief legal officer of The Pokémon Company has shared a rare insight into its thinking behind fan project takedowns.

MultiVersus' top 20 most requested characters have been revealed, with Ben 10, Walter White, and Rigby from Regular Show taking up the top three spaces.

It's been a whole ten years since Dark Souls 2 arrived on the scene, and thanks to some modding magic, fans can finally enjoy the Soulslike sequel at a higher framerate.

If you were hoping to dive into Dragon's Dogma 2's huge open world alongside your friends at some point in the future, you might want to temper those expectations. According to director Hideaki Itsuno, the devs haven't been considering "any form of multiplayer" at all.

Update: As promised, MultiVersus has been re-revealed following its unprecedented year offline. The title will launch on 28th May, and will ship with a raft of improvements, including an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5, all-new rollback netcode, and fresh stages and characters. We spotted Townsville from the Powerpuff Girls.

Fighting game MultiVersus, the Smash Bros.-like that merged the worlds of DC Comics, Game of Thrones, Looney Tunes, and other Warner Bros.-owned properties, will relaunch on May 28, developer Player First Games announced Monday. MultiVersus has been offline since June 2023, when the developer took the game down to retool it.

MultiVersus is back from the dead, with its full launch finally announced. This comes after its early access period ended last summer, taking the game offline for months.

The ever-industrious Italian outfit Milestone is back with Monster Jam Showdown, which is due out on PS5 and PS4 later this year. Pitched as a comprehensive monster truck experience, with 40 rigs included in the base game and more to follow through free and premium add-on packs, the developer is promising to leverage its “technology and expertise [to] deliver an approachable yet rewarding experience”.

A demo for Stellar Blade went live last night, with many assuming it was shadowdropped by PlayStation to hype up its upcoming exclusive. However, it now sees that it was shared on the PlayStation store in error, as it was taken offline just half an hour later.

MultiVersus fans have been desperately awaiting the return of the game ever since it was taken down from storefronts following its open beta period. It seemed as though an imminent reveal was on the cards earlier this week, after the official MultiVersus Twitter account spurred back into life for a "mic check", but with the weekend approaching and fans getting more and more irritated with each passing day, developer Player First has finally lifted the lid on when we'll see the re-reveal.

The last thing you want to see when loading up Fortnite for a match with your friends, especially when a big new update is dropping, is to be hit with an error. The worst of which might be the “Fortnite servers not responding” error due to how vague it is. Most people don’t know what servers are, let alone what it means when they aren’t responding, except that you can’t play your game. The question then becomes if you have any power to solve this issue yourself or if you’re forced to wait until Epic Games addresses it on its end.

MultiVersus was the biggest game in the world for about a week, before an iffy Battle Pass and tardy updates plunged its appeal, and prompted Player1stGames to unexpectedly pull the whole thing offline. The release was never meant to disappear entirely, of course, and the developer has been beavering away on some important updates behind-the-scenes. Now it appears it’s finally poised to return.

You’ll need to be connected to the Internet to enjoy Nacon’s upcoming social racer Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown. This brand-new trailer, which shows the off-road areas of Hong Kong Island, demonstrates the breadth of experiences available in the upcoming game – and it also showcases its MMO aspects, which have been a big part of the property in the past.

The original Super Mario Maker will effectively shut down in April, and a group of players is racing against the clock to beat every single level before the servers go offline.

Makers of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu owe Nintendo $2.4 million after reaching a settlement with the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom developer, following a lawsuit over the open-source emulator just last week. Both Nintendo and Tropic Haze, the company behind Yuzu, filed for a final judgment and permanent injunction on Monday, according to court documents, after Nintendo accused the Yuzu makers of copyright infringement, circumvention of Nintendo’s Switch protections, and selling those circumvention technologies as Yuzu, among other things.

We’re barely into 2024 and there are more survival games than we can shake a stick at – one such being Nightingale.

MultiVersus fans are hopeful that we'll finally see the game re-revealed this month, and there's a surprising amount of evidence supporting that idea.

The Unreal Engine 5.3 continues to impress, powering some amazing creations, such as a dune desert landscape showcased in a video shared online this week.

February 29 is a rare day, a perfect date to celebrate with a session of the Final Fantasy-themed musical game Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. However, I’ve got sad news for anyone attempting to celebrate today with a little Theathrythm as the rhythm game just won’t load on this day, specifically.

Tekken 8 costed to develop almost three times more than its predecessor, and development costs have been skyrocketing for a while, according to series creator Katsuhiro Harada.

Bandai Namco has announced today that Tekken 8 has surpassed two million units sold in its first month. This follows Circana (formerly the NPD Group) confirming that Bandai Namco's fighting game was the top new game of January across the United States, beaten only by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III in the monthly chart.

Nightingale is off to a good start. The horror-tinged, multiplayer survival and crafting game entered early access this week on Steam, and so far has peaked at over 32,000 players. However, like many online games, it’s had a rough first week. One of the most common complaints from users (among the usual early access fare like the lack of some quality-of-life features), according to Steam forums, is the “always online” requirement, which requires even solo players to join a server.

Inflexion Games, the studio behind the early-access survival game Nightingale, has confirmed that it’s already working on an offline mode following feedback from players who weren’t so keen on it being online-only.

Steam survival crafting game Nightingale is getting an offline mode "as soon as is feasible", with developer Inflexion Games deeming it a priority.

Last Epoch was enjoying a hugely successful 1.0 launch earlier this week with over 162,000 concurrent players and favorable comparisons to Diablo's hack 'n' slashing. All that success has unfortunately strained servers and caused multiplayer issues for those not playing offline, leading to some mixed user reviews, but the studio's founder has thanked the hundreds of thousands of fans for their "patience and kindness" anyway.

With Nightingale off to an average start, its developer is rolling out an offline mode as soon as possible to win fans back.

Last Epoch left early access on February 21, resulting in a sudden influx of players checking out the full release. How many players? On the day Last Epoch officially launched, SteamDB recorded a peak of over 152,000 concurrent players. One day later, the figure has grown to more than 176,000 players, and it’s not even a weekend.

Just two days after launch, Inflexion Games announced that the developer is now prioritizing the development of an offline mode for Nightingale. In its current state, Nightingale requires a consistent online connection to the game servers. Having just released into Early Access, this is what every player hopes to see. A developer open to changing its game to fit community feedback, which it appears Inflexion is willing to do.

We're well past the midpoint of the week and are now hurtling towards some very important things. Obviously, there's the weekend to consider, but we're also in the vicinity of FFVII Rebirth's review embargo lift. My advice: peruse the amazing deals below, lock in some purchases for Saturday, and then go offline until the 29th. It's gonna be spoiler city soon.

One big detail you need to consider when thinking about playing Last Epoch online or offline is the fact that you can’t swap between online or offline after a character is created. I’ll walk you through the implications of not being able to switch between offline and online in Last Epoch.

Aspyr is proud to announce, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the beloved Star Wars Battlefront series, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 will soon be able to play the classic Star Wars Battlefront games online and offline in a complete collection.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's player count is falling on Steam, going as low as 916 earlier this week. This comes exactly two weeks since its all-time peak of 13,459 players online at once, whereas the game now averages a player count of around 2,000, regularly dipping below 1,000.

The original developers of The Binding of Isaac are working on building an online multiplayer version of the legendary roguelike, but testing has been stalled after players hacked their way into unfinished modes.

Helldivers 2's developer has doubled its player count following server issues, but says that it's "still not enough" to meet the demand. 

Things aren’t looking good for Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With the shadow of failed live-service superhero games looming over it, Suicide Squad needed an early victory to prove itself to fans and demonstrate that it’s not like the games that came before it.

Humble is currently offering a bundle that includes almost every Mega Man title. For just $20, you’ll get a grand total of 25 games, including Steam versions of the Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 & 2, Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 & 2, the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, and 2018’s excellent Mega Man 11. As an added bonus, you’ll get a 34% off coupon for Mega Man X DiVE Offline and a 50% off coupon for the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection (both are redeemable on Steam).

Developer Rocksteady Studios has taken its new live-service multiplayer shooter set in the Batman: Arkham universe, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice Leauge, offline after Early Access players hit a «story completion» bug. While the standard edition of the game doesn't hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC until this Friday, February 2, players who purchase the more expensive Deluxe Edition, which costs $99.99 compared to the Standard Edition's $69.99 price tag, can jump in three days early. 

Like many modern releases, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League put its short early access period behind a paywall. While the game fully launches on February 2, anyone who paid for the Deluxe Edition is meant to be able to play 72 hours early. However, that is not working in practice.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is out now - as long as you opted into its early access release and you live in New Zealand where it's now January 30 - but it's already been pulled offline due to a huge bug with story progression.

Rocksteady Studios has been forced to pull Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League offline just one hour into its Deluxe Edition's early access launch due to a bug that automatically completed players' games.

So we haven’t done one of our “where is our review” posts in a while, because frankly, we generally get copies of AAA games on time. Although there have been bumps in the road every so often, most gaming publishers want people to try out their games early, from the press to content creators, to any number of other folks in this modern media landscape.

A new report looking into how games are consumed in French-speaking African countries Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, and Cameroon shows a clear preference for free-to-play titles, in an ecosystem dominated by Android.

The power of the Unreal Engine 5 sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between reality and digital recreation, as showcased in some impressive videos shared online.

New Tekken 8 comparison videos were shared online, highlighting how much the game's visuals and character models have changed since the game's original reveal and the previous entry in the series.

Anticipated mobile gacha game, Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live finally had its release date announced on Twitter. The very same post confirmed the game will only be live for about three months.

Zombie survival game The Day Before went offline for good on Monday, just 45 days after the game launched to infamy on Steam. It was an ignominious end for the game, which went from one of the most wishlisted games on Valve’s storefront to financial disaster for developer Fntastic.

APB Reloaded is being shut down on PS4 and Xbox consoles, Little Orbit and PLAION have announced, though the PC version will remain online. The Xbox version has been offline for a little while due to technical issues, and now there are no plans to bring those servers back. From February 1st, monetisation options will be taken offline for the PS4 version with the final shutdown taking place on August 2nd.

Apple Notes serves as the default note-taking app on the iPhone, it boasts simplicity and can even scan your documents. However, its formatting capabilities are somewhat limited, and it lacks template options. Luckily, if Apple Notes falls short of your needs, there are some cool alternatives you can try.

APB Reloaded is being shut down on PS4 and Xbox consoles, Little Orbit and PLAION have announced, though the PC version will remain online. The Xbox version has been offline for a little while due to technical issues, and now there are no plans to bring those servers back. From February 1st, monetisation options will be taken offline for the PS4 version with the final shutdown taking place on August 2nd.