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Naughty Dog’s canceled The Last of Us multiplayer game was reportedly deep into development before it was canceled, a decision that reportedly caused a stir at Sony.
That’s according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, who shared some insight into the scrapped project on the Friends Per Second podcast (via GamesRadar). While at first discussing the recent Bungie layoffs, as well as concerns about the Destiny 2 studio’s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, Schreier soon turned to talking about Sony’s current live service games, like Concord.
The reporter called Sony’s strategy to push live service games “trend-chasing to the extreme” and “egregious”, especially when you look at online games that have “pivoted from single-player studios”.
Schreier claimed that the Horizon Zero Dawn online game, which was announced back in 2022, is “still in development” but doesn’t know if it will ever come out. He acknowledged that there are rare cases where live service games can succeed, like Helldivers 2.
On the topic of The Last of Us Online, Schreier said it was “in development for something like four years with a team in the hundreds”, before it was canceled last December.
“That is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss,” he added. “And that project, that getting canceled was not a bloodless endeavor. There were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.”
When Naughty Dog shared the announcement, it said that it scrapped the project because it didn’t want to “become a solely live service games studio” and that it would otherwise have to put all resources behind multiplayer projects.
“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 said at the time.
Schreier added that he thought Naughty Dog’s decision to cancel The Last of Us Online was the right decision, as it wouldn’t be beholden to live service games like other studios.