Developer tha ltd announced that Humanity’s User Stages feature will cease operation on March 6, 2026. After that date, players across all platforms will no longer be able to upload their own created stages or engage with those made by others. The announcement comes less than three years after the puzzle-platformer launched in May 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC, with Xbox versions following in May 2024. While locally saved stages remain accessible, the shutdown marks the end of community content sharing that was highlighted as a major feature during the game’s marketing.
The decision appears driven by the game underperforming commercially, with server maintenance costs for user-generated content likely outweighing revenue from new sales. However, Humanity’s single-player campaign containing over 90 stages remains fully playable and unaffected by the user content shutdown. The news sparked discussion in the gaming community about preservation of user-created content and whether alternatives like Steam Workshop could have extended the feature’s lifespan at lower cost.
What Is Humanity
Humanity is a puzzle-platforming game with real-time strategy elements developed by tha ltd and published by Enhance Games. Players control an ethereal Shiba Inu dog tasked with guiding massive crowds of marching humans through elaborate stages filled with obstacles, enemies, and puzzles. Using a simple ‘woof’ command system, you place directional markers that tell the crowd when to jump, turn, push, float, shoot, or climb to reach salvation at the end of each level.
The game features a narrative campaign with over 90 stages, wild boss fights, and unlockable skills that expand your command options as you progress. Optional objectives in each level challenge players to collect giant gold beings, adding replayability for completionists. The visual style presents humans as featureless figures flowing like rivers through abstract geometric environments, creating striking imagery as hundreds or thousands of people move in synchronized patterns.
The Stage Creator
Beyond the campaign, Humanity shipped with a Stage Creator tool that allowed players to design and share custom levels. The creator was praised for being super easy to use, enabling players without technical expertise to craft elaborate puzzles using the same building blocks as the official campaign. Users could place obstacles, enemies, command markers, and objectives, then test their creations before uploading them for others to play.
The User Stages feature functioned as a central hub where players browsed community creations, downloaded levels to play, and uploaded their own designs. This user-generated content was intended to provide unlimited replayability beyond the finite campaign, letting creative players extend the game’s life indefinitely. Games like Super Mario Maker, LittleBigPlanet, and Dreams demonstrated how robust level editors can sustain communities for years after launch.
Why the Shutdown Is Happening
While tha ltd hasn’t explicitly stated reasons for shutting down User Stages, Reddit discussions suggest the game’s performance didn’t meet expectations to warrant continued server support. Maintaining servers for user-generated content requires ongoing operational costs including hosting, bandwidth, moderation to remove inappropriate content, and technical support to address upload/download issues. When a game’s active player base shrinks, these costs become increasingly difficult to justify against diminishing revenue.
Humanity launched with optional virtual reality support on all platforms and earned generally positive reviews praising its unique concept and puzzle design. However, the game operates in a crowded indie puzzle market where only the biggest successes sustain large communities. Without significant sales momentum or live-service monetization like season passes or cosmetic items, funding indefinite server operation becomes unsustainable for smaller studios.
The Three-Year Window
The March 6, 2026 shutdown date gives User Stages a lifespan of approximately 33 months from the May 2023 launch. Reddit user Sloshy42 expressed disheartening feelings that a major aspect of the game would disappear so soon after launch. In an era where some games maintain online features for a decade or more, three years feels brief, especially for players who purchased Humanity specifically for the level creation and sharing capabilities.
However, three years is longer than some games receive. Babylon’s Fall shut down servers roughly one year after launch. Anthem’s live service ambitions collapsed even faster. For indie studios with limited resources, maintaining online infrastructure for niche titles beyond a few years represents significant financial burden. The timing suggests tha ltd recognized that player engagement had dropped below the threshold where continued investment made sense.
What Players Are Losing
After March 6, 2026, players lose the ability to upload newly created stages to share with the community. All stages previously uploaded by others become inaccessible for download and play. The browsing interface where players discovered community creations shuts down entirely. However, any stages you created and saved locally to your device remain playable in offline mode, preserving your personal creations even if nobody else can access them.
This means the most popular and creative community levels that didn’t get saved locally before the shutdown will be permanently lost. Players who discovered the game after March 2026 will never experience what the community built during those three years. The collective creative output of Humanity’s player base essentially vanishes except for whatever individuals chose to archive on their personal devices.
Community Reactions and Alternatives
Reddit user SomethingNew65 suggested the developers could handpick a few hundred top levels to include in a game update as an additional campaign. This approach would preserve the best community content officially rather than losing everything entirely. Curating standout creations into permanent DLC or free updates has precedent in other games and would honor the community’s contributions while keeping excellent levels accessible.
Multiple commenters noted that Steam Workshop support could have prevented this situation. Steam Workshop is Valve’s platform for hosting and sharing user-generated content that many games integrate. It’s pretty remarkable how Steam can host such content at no cost to developers, as Reddit user ShadowBlah observed. By offloading hosting and infrastructure to Valve’s servers, developers avoid ongoing costs while players retain access as long as Steam operates.
Integration with Third-Party Platforms
User Sloshy42 questioned how straightforward implementing Steam Workshop or another third-party modding platform would be. For games designed from the start with proprietary server infrastructure, retrofitting Steam Workshop integration requires significant engineering work. File formats, authentication systems, and content discovery interfaces all need redesigning to work with external platforms.
However, for games still in development, building with Steam Workshop or similar platforms from day one avoids these problems entirely. The decision to run proprietary servers versus leveraging existing infrastructure should factor in long-term sustainability, especially for indie studios without guaranteed hit franchises. The cautionary tale of Humanity’s User Stages shutdown illustrates why relying on established platforms makes sense for smaller teams.
The Single-Player Is Safe
The positive news is that Humanity’s single-player campaign remains fully functional and unaffected by the User Stages shutdown. The 90-plus stages, boss fights, narrative, and unlockable skills that comprise the core game continue working normally. Players who never engaged with user-generated content lose nothing, and the game remains worth purchasing for the official campaign alone.
Reddit user ShadowBlah admitted finishing the game but not feeling inclined to engage with any user-created content. This sentiment reflects that not all players who enjoy a game’s main experience care about community content. For those players, Humanity remains an intact product delivering the experience they paid for. The User Stages feature was bonus content rather than the primary appeal, making its removal disappointing but not catastrophic to the game’s value proposition.
The Broader Preservation Issue
Humanity’s User Stages shutdown exemplifies recurring problems with game preservation and digital ownership. When games rely on publisher servers for features, those features exist only as long as publishers decide to maintain them. Players don’t truly own the complete game they purchased; they license access to experiences that can be revoked when economically convenient.
This differs from physical media’s permanence. A cartridge or disc continues functioning decades later regardless of whether the publisher exists. But modern games with online dependencies become partially or completely unplayable when servers shut down. Preservation organizations like the Video Game History Foundation work to archive games before they vanish, but user-generated content presents unique challenges since the volume of community creations can be massive and distributed across player devices rather than centrally stored.
Who Is tha ltd
tha is a creative firm based in Japan that has worked on experimental art installations including a redesign of Tokyo’s public toilets. The studio explores intersections between art, design, and technology, with Humanity representing their entry into commercial video game development. The title started as a creative challenge to see how many digital people could be displayed on screen simultaneously. Once the demo was created, tha presented it at the Unity Festival to a panel of judges that included Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
Mizuguchi is the legendary designer behind Rez, Lumines, and Tetris Effect, and his company Enhance Games became Humanity’s publisher. The connection brought credibility and publishing resources that helped Humanity reach audiences across PlayStation, PC, and Xbox. However, even with Enhance’s backing, the game apparently didn’t achieve the commercial success needed to sustain indefinite user content servers.
FAQs
When does Humanity’s User Stages feature shut down?
The User Stages feature ceases operation on March 6, 2026. After that date, players can no longer upload custom stages or access community creations, though locally saved stages remain playable offline.
Will the single-player campaign still work?
Yes, Humanity’s main campaign with over 90 stages, boss fights, and narrative content remains fully playable and unaffected by the User Stages shutdown. Only the user-generated content sharing feature is being discontinued.
Can I save community levels before the shutdown?
Yes, any stages you download and save locally to your device before March 6, 2026 will remain playable after the shutdown. However, you won’t be able to browse or download new community levels after that date.
Why is Humanity shutting down user content?
While not officially stated, the shutdown likely reflects that server maintenance costs for hosting user-generated content became unsustainable relative to the game’s active player base and revenue.
What platforms is Humanity available on?
Humanity is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC via Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The game supports optional virtual reality on all platforms.
Who developed Humanity?
tha ltd, a Japanese creative firm known for experimental art installations, developed Humanity. Enhance Games, the company founded by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, published the title.
Could Steam Workshop have prevented this?
Potentially yes. Steam Workshop allows developers to host user-generated content on Valve’s servers at no ongoing cost. Several Reddit users suggested this could have sustained the User Stages feature indefinitely without burdening tha ltd with server maintenance expenses.
When did Humanity originally release?
Humanity launched for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC in May 2023. Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions released in May 2024, approximately one year later.
Conclusion
Humanity’s User Stages shutdown on March 6, 2026 represents another data point in the ongoing conversation about game preservation, digital ownership, and the sustainability of user-generated content features. While the three-year lifespan exceeded some failed live-service games, it falls short of what players reasonably expect from advertised features in premium-priced titles. The situation could have been avoided with Steam Workshop integration or similar third-party hosting solutions that transfer infrastructure costs away from small developers. For future indie games, Humanity serves as a cautionary tale: if you can’t guarantee indefinite server support, build with platforms that can. The loss of community creations is disappointing for engaged players, but the silver lining is that Humanity’s excellent single-player campaign remains intact as a complete, worthwhile experience. Those 90-plus stages crafted by tha ltd will continue delighting new players long after the User Stages feature becomes a footnote in the game’s history. For anyone who created memorable levels or discovered favorites from the community, now is the time to save them locally before March 2026 erases three years of collective creativity.