By Naughty Dog has made it official – their proposed “The Last of Us” multiplayer game, dubbed ‘Factions’ by many and “The Last of Us Online” within the company, is dead.
In a press statement published on their official site, they say they’ve made the “incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game”.
Since the release of “The Last of Us Part II” in 2020, the company has seemingly been at work on a multiplayer title set within that universe – but shared little about it.
Then a few months back came reports of the project’s potential scrapping followed by conflicting reports that it was alive but they were “reconsidering the long-term viability of the project”.
In today’s release, they confirmed much of both reports is true and revealed the key problem was one common for developers working on any major live service title – resource hogging.
Namely, the sheer amount of staff, attention and resources required to keep generating fresh content would come at the sacrifice of developing new single-player games and properties. They say:
“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. We’re equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.
The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.
In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. 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.
Naughty Dog have chosen the latter it seems with a rumored third “The Last of Us” and maybe some fresh IP on the way as they add: “we have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we’re working on here”.
They also confirm the “learnings and investments in technology” from the scrapped multiplayer game will carry into their development of other projects.
Source: Naughty Dog
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