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LEGO has announced that LEGO Digital Designer ( LDD the company’s proprietary virtual building program, will no longer be updated. New parts may occasionally be added, but LEGO is officially defunding the platform. Yesterday Kevin Hinkle, Community Manager for the Americas, posted the following announcement on the LEGO Ambassadors private forum. “ Good Afternoon everyone, I’ve just touched base with one of our Digital Product Specialists within the Consumer Services team. A business decision has been made to no longer allocate resources towards the LDD program / initiative. For now, the program will continue to be offered to anyone interested in utilizing it but please do not expect any updates regarding functionality, the adding of new LEGO elements or glitch fixes. We have decided to pursue other digital experiences. Although this may not be the answer you were hoping for, I hope this information will be of use to your RLUG members. Thank you for your time and continued support for the LEGO Brand & hobby.” Although it’s been clear that LDD has not been a priority for the LEGO company for some time, with the latest version update to in December 2013 and the last parts update in fall of 2014, this announcement sent shock-waves through the LEGO community. The online community was quick to respond as fan websites were inundated with upset LDD users. It was clear that LEGO had kicked the LDD ‘hornet’s nest’ with the sudden announcement. A second announcement from LEGO’s Community Support Senior Manager, Tanja Friberg, quickly followed. This announcement sounded slightly more positive but perhaps does not entirely remove confusion. “ Dear Ambassadors, I hope this will help clarify a bit of the confusion and misunderstanding from our end regarding LDD. TLG will remain committed to digital building going forward, in regards to LDD, this means that we will continue to.
At a recent discussion at the LEGO Ambassador Forum members asked when could we expect an update to LEGO Digital Designer ( LDD). The response from LEGO’s representatives came as a great surprise and sent shockwaves through the LEGO fan community. Below are the details. LEGO Digital Designer was originally released in 2005 as part of LEGO Design by ME – a service that allowed kids and adults to design their own LEGO models, share them with others via a gallery, and even order the models as actual LEGO kits. Because these custom sets needed special handling by LEGO, the price for the kits was significantly higher than that of normal LEGO sets. LEGO eventually decided to discontinue the service, and by early 2012 models created in LDD could no longer be purchased as LEGO Design by Me sets. However LEGO continued maintaining LEGO Digital Designer itself as a free design software. LDD has been immensely popular with LEGO fans, as it is the easiest and most intuitive software to design and share custom LEGO models. It is often used by people to work out concepts, scales, shapes, and colors before committing to buy actual LEGO elements to build a model. LDD is also used for collaborative projects between several builders. And it is a great way to share building instructions of custom LEGO models with others. In other words, the software has been used extensively by the LEGO fan community for all these years. LEGO regularly updated LDD by adding newly released elements to the virtual bricks selection within the program. And it also maintained its compatibility with Windows and Mac devices. However there has been no update since version, and no new parts have been added since the fall of 2014. Thus the question at the LEGO Ambassador Forum about when the next update can be expected. Kevin Hinkle, Community Manager for the Americas, looked into getting an official answer.
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