The Last of Us multiplayer project officially cancelled by Naughty Dog
Following reports that development on Naughty Dog's long-awaited The Last of Us multiplayer game had been «slowed down» earlier this year, the studio has announced it's officially pulling the plug on the project, saying it didn't want to become a «solely live service games studio».
Naughty Dog's multiplayer game was initially planned to be part of The Last of Us Part 2, but the studio announced it was separating the two halves in 2019. After years of relative silence on its progress, studio co-head Neil Druckmann emerged in January to confirm more would be revealed «later this year» — but instead, May brought the news the project needed «more time».
Shortly after, a report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier claimed Destiny developer Bungie — which had been individually assessing many of Sony's «games as a service» projects since being acquired by the company — had raised concerns about The Last of Us multiplayer's «ability to keep players engaged for a long period of time», resulting in Sony scaling back the team to just a «small group» while it evaluated the project's direction.
And now, some seven months later, The Last of Us' multiplayer spin-off has been officially cancelled. «We realise many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we've been calling The Last of Us Online,» Naughty Dog wrote in a statement confirming the news on its website. «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,» it continued, «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
Read more on eurogamer.net
