Naughty Dog just announced that The Last Of Us Online, a standalone multiplayer-focused game set in its post-apocalyptic universe, has been cancelled.
A statement on the company's website reads (emphasis mine):
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.
While this will be disappointing to fans of Factions (the original multiplayer diversion from the original game) and everyone at Naughty Dog who has been working hard on it for the last few years, it's incredible to me, sitting here in late 2023, that this thing was ever greenlit in the first place.
The Last Of Us games are the quintessential singleplayer releases: moody, tense experiences elevated by the fact they have been designed from the ground up to be played alone and in a way where every step has been meticulously crafted by the developers.
Multiplayer throws all that out the window. The Last Of Us Online always felt less like the natural progression of the series and more like the latest example of Live Service Game Madness, where publishers and studios--seduced by the constant cash-glow games like Destiny and Fortnite are able to generate--are more interested in getting a slice of that revenue pie than making smarter, long-term decisions based on the focus and abilities of their teams.
To their credit, that is what has eventually happened here! It's cool that Naughty Dog realised that hey, uh, if we do this thing, it's going to consume us, maybe we'd better not do it, and pulled the plug before the game came out or even got any further in development. It's not great they spent years and probably millions of dollars trying before getting to that point, but they got there.
