What the Hell Is Going on with The Last of Us Factions, Naughty Dog's Standalone PS5 Multiplayer Game? | Push Square

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If there was one game we’d have bet our life savings on appearing during last night’s flubbed PS Showcase, it was The Last of Us Factions. Naughty Dog hasn’t actually given us an official name for the project yet, so we’re using the moniker fans tend to use the most – but just to be clear, we’re referring to the online standalone spin-off that the studio has in development. This is likely to be the crown jewel of Sony’s live service strategy, and will certainly have a budget many, many times higher than the titles that were announced, like Fairgame$ and Concord – neither of which showed gameplay, by the way.

So, what’s going on? Well, all the way back in 2019 – that’s four years ago, by the way – it confirmed that unlike the original The Last of Us, sequel The Last of Us: Part II would be a single player-only game. It confirmed at the time that the mode had taken on a life of its own, and in order to focus on finishing the core campaign, it had spun off the project as a standalone release. “We are as big a fan of Factions as the rest of our community and are excited to share more when it's ready,” it said at the time.

Fast forward four years, a successful television series, and a complete PS5 and PC remake of the original game, and we’re still none the wiser. In 2020, series creator Neil Druckmann promised the multiplayer game would be “worth the wait” then in 2021 said it wouldn’t show the game until “it’s ready”. In 2022 he said it was the developer’s “biggest ever effort” and shared some concept art, promising it’d announce more in 2023. We got a second piece of concept art in January, but we’re now in May, in the aftermath of a major PS Showcase, and we’ve not heard a peep – despite the frequent promise of more info