Naughty Dog Cancels The Last of Us Online Multiplayer Spinoff

Zinger Key Points
  • Naughty Dog cancels The Last of Us Online due to struggles juggling live-service commitments with narrative games.
  • Sony's wider shift toward live-service titles delayed about half of its online games past 2025.

Sony Group Corp.'s SONY Naughty Dog recently announced the cancellation of The Last of Us Online, a multiplayer spin-off of its renowned series.

The studio disclosed this decision on Dec. 14, expressing difficulties in balancing ongoing content creation for a live-service game with the development of future narrative-driven titles.

See Also: Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann Teases The Last of Us Game Surprises In HBO's Season 2

"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 multiplayer spin-off, previously referred to as Factions, was announced in 2022 but never went beyond concept art. Reports indicated production setbacks, scaling back of the team and eventual suspension of the project.

"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 statement revealed.

"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," the developer added.

The studio continued to express gratitude for the community's support and highlighted the valuable technological advancements and learnings gained from the canceled project, which will influence their future endeavors.

"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," Naughty Dog promised.

The Last of Us Online stood among several fresh multiplayer initiatives underway within Sony's studios, aligning with PlayStation 5's strategic move towards an extensive emphasis on live-service games, according to Kotaku.

Sony disclosed in a November earnings call that approximately half of the nearly dozen online games in progress would experience delays extending beyond 2025.

Read Next: Insomniac Confirms Spider-Man 2 Update Set For Early 2024 Release

Image credits: Hamara on Shutterstock.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Comments
Loading...
Posted In: GamingNewsGeneralNaughty DogThe Last of UsThe Last Of Us Online
Benzinga simplifies the market for smarter investing

Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.

Join Now: Free!