Fans have been waiting for the promised The Last Of Us multiplayer game for years now, but Naughty Dog has confirmed they won’t be moving forward with it.
Disappointing news to wake up to. Naughty Dog has officially cancelled The Last Of Us multiplayer game which it has been developing, slowly but surely, since the release of The Last Of Us Part II in 2020.
In a lengthy statement, Naughty Dog described the game as “unique and had tremendous potential.”
Naughty Dog also went on to explain their reasoning for abandoning the game:
“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.”
The game studio also teased some of their future titles.
“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.”
While the news is certainly disappointing, it’s not exactly unexpected.
Naughty Dog announced in May that they were giving the online multiplayer game “more time”, which threw into question the game’s viability. The video game industry as a whole has also suffered a lot of budget cuts and layoffs over the last year and Naughty Dog also reportedly had to lay off 25 developers in October, leaving the project’s future uncertain.
Naughty Dog are current;y gearing up to release The Last Of Us Part II Remastered in January, but haven’t announced their next game after it. The second season of HBO’s TV adaptation of the games is reportedly beginning production in February and Kaitlyn Dever has reportedly signed on to play Abby Anderson, the second game’s main antagonist.
