Naughty Dog
, the studio behind The Last of Us, has announced that it has decided to halt the development of
The Last of Us
Online. “We realise 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,” the developer said in a blog post.
The studio had previously described the multiplayer game as a "fresh, new experience" rooted in their passion for delivering incredible stories, characters, and gameplay.
The Last of Us developers says that the team working was “ enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed,” had a clear vision for the project, and had already refined its gameplay. However, as they began to accelerate the production, it became evident that they had bitten off more than they could chew.
In 2022, the studio shared some concept art from their upcoming project, but they have not given any significant updates since then. However, a year later, there was still no update, and after the
PlayStation Showcase
in May, the studio admitted that they needed more time to work on it and could not provide details yet.
Shortly after that, Bloomberg reported that the studio had reassigned developers who were working on the project to other teams and was reconsidering its viability.
The company realised that “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.” And it chose the latter.
Naughty Dog, the game development company, released “The Last of Us” game in 2013 exclusively for
PlayStation
3. A sequel to the game, “The Last of Us Part II,” was released in 2020. Now, “The Last of Us Part II Remastered” for the PS5 is on the schedule for a January 2024 release.
The studio says that it is working on more than one new single-player title and will share more details later.
English (US) ·