'The Last of Us' Project Canceled

The project had been in development since at least 2020.

By Ashley Turner

A spinoff based on the Last of Us franchise has been canned. The video game studio Naughty Dog announced Thursday that it has "made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on" a planned multiplayer game set in the world of The Last of Us called The Last of Us Online.

"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," wrote the studio in a blog post on its website. "We're equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands."

Originally, The Last of Us Online was supposed to be revealed this year on the heels of the hit HBO show based on the video game series. Only concept art had been released; no gameplay was shown, according to Polygon.

In 2020, Naughty Dog released The Last of Us Part 2, after which developers had been working on The Last of Us Online for an extended period. According to the studio, the online game was "unique and had tremendous potential," but was also a challenging task that it lacked the resources to tackle.

"In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear," the developer explained. "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."

Though Naughty Dog has officially canceled The Last of Us Online, the studio provided some good news in its announcement: "The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. 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."

Even back in 2018, Naughty Dog announced that it would offer a multiplayer component for The Last of Us Part 2, originally announced in 2016.

Initially, the first The Last of Us game had a multiplayer component as a part of its own design back in 2013, and it was also included in the PlayStation 4 version of the game, The Last of Us Remastered.

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