When Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment first released The Last of Us on the PlayStation 3, it came with an online multiplayer mode, allowing players to partake in team-based missions reminiscent of what many AAA games were doing in the era. Ultimately it was something that never seemed to have an active community and they never really did again, and from the perspective of someone who appreciated TLoU for its single-player story-driven experiences, this 100% made sense.
However for a while now, the studio has been working on The Last of Us Online, which as its title implies, would be a fully online game set in the world of the franchise. As of today however, this project is now cancelled, with Naughty Dog issuing the below statement:
We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.
We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We’re equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.
The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.
In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project. The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we’re working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we’re ready.
Until then, we’re incredibly thankful to our community for your support throughout the years.
Hopefully nobody loses their jobs over this, and will be pivoted across to the “more than one ambitious, brand new single player game(s)” they are working on.
