Naughty Dog cancels The Last of Us multiplayer game after nearly four years of work

gamesradar.com:

The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off has effectively been canceled at Naughty Dog.

The developer has made the announcement in a blog post posted to its website and social media. "There's no easy way to say this: We've made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game," Naughty Dog writes in the blog, acknowledging that many were eagerly awaiting news on the game they'd come to call 'The Last of Us Online.'

An Update on The Last of Us Online: https://t.co/nMUm7TmH9h pic.twitter.com/fmuXCLzDMBDecember 14, 2023

"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," the announcement continues. "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."

Naughty Dog then reveals that the multiplayer team had been in "pre-production," before The Last of Us 2 even launched. That means, in theory, the multiplayer team has been in pre-production for nearly four years now. Naughty Dog also says the entire experience was "unique and had tremendous potential."

However, with the increase in production came a "massive scope" in ambition. "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," the studio then writes.

So the studio was left with two paths: become a "solely live service games studio," or continue to make single-player games, but ditch the new multiplayer project. Naughty Dog chose the latter, prioritizing its single-player games over