The dream of a multiplayer game for “The Last of Us” is over. The game died before release – but for good reasons.
Fans of the “The Last of Us” franchise have had a really good run in recent years. Not only was “The Last of Us Part II” an outstanding game with great reviews, but the TV adaptation of the first part of the series was also a huge success and marked a new era of video game TV series for many.
But now there’s devastating news from the developer Naughty Dog: the project “The Last of Us Online” is dead and will never be released. Development on the game has been halted.
Recently, the TV series of The Last of Us has sparked positive news:
Why was the project canceled? Naughty Dog provided the reasoning in an official announcement. It revealed that it became clear that the game could not be released with the ambitions they had initially set. If the game had been released, they would have had to “use all the studio’s resources to support The Last of Us Online with new content for the coming years.”
Or to put it more clearly: Naughty Dog simply wouldn’t have been able to develop any more single-player games, at least not with the current resources of the studio.
Naughty Dog is particularly committed to exactly these projects.
How long was The Last of Us Online in development? According to the developers, work on the project had been ongoing since the development of “The Last of Us Part II” began – that is, since 2017. Accordingly, about 6 years were invested in the project, and they had reached a point where they were “satisfied with the gameplay” and believed they could fulfill the original vision – at least in part.
The project has grown over the developers’ heads
That Naughty Dog has failed at their own ambitions is by the way not an isolated case in the industry and is actually the norm in multiplayer projects with a live-service approach. Many developers come to the conclusion that the ongoing support of such a game basically consumes the resources of an entire studio in order to do justice to the fans and the game. Just a few months ago, Overwatch 2 largely abandoned the PvE component to fully focus on the live-service approach in PvP.
Years ago, WildStar also faced very similar problems and ultimately failed as well – but only after release. The then developer Stephan Frost had detailed which phases there are for MMORPGs (and thus many live-service games) and why they become a burden for studios that is hardly foreseeable at the beginning.
Was the time completely in vain? No, at least not according to the developers. They learned a lot from the development of the game that will be invaluable in the future. Although there are no concrete details provided, Naughty Dog seems to regard this as “tuition fees” and will adjust future projects accordingly.
Unlike many other studios, Naughty Dog seems able to withstand this decision without being on the brink of financial ruin – even though many fans are, of course, disappointed that the multiplayer game is now definitively dead.
The only truly positive aspect is that Naughty Dog is currently working on “more than one ambitious, brand new single-player game” and that they want to talk about it in the future.
That at least gives hope that a “The Last of Us Part III” might be on the horizon.
