Naughty Dog has introduced it has ceased manufacturing of The Last of Us Online, its long-in-development multiplayer title set inside its fashionable post-apocalyptic universe.
In a weblog submit, Naughty Dog explains it made the “incredibly difficult” choice to cancel the venture after it apparently grew to become so huge that the studio realized it might must commit valuable sources to help it post-launch for years to return. When confronted with the fact of getting to change into a studio solely devoted to supporting a dwell service sport or to proceed making single-player experiences, it selected the latter.
Here’s Naughty Dog’s full assertion:
We notice a lot of you’ve got been anticipating information across the venture that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no straightforward solution to say this: We’ve made the extremely troublesome choice to cease growth on that sport.
We know this information might be powerful for a lot of, particularly our devoted The Last of Us Factions group, who’ve been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We’re equally crushed on the studio as we have been wanting ahead to placing it in your palms. We wished to share with you some background of how we got here to this choice.
The multiplayer crew has been in pre-production with this sport since we have been engaged on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an expertise we felt was distinctive and had great potential. As the multiplayer crew iterated on their idea for The Last of Us Online throughout this time, their imaginative and prescient crystalized, the gameplay acquired extra refined and satisfying, and we have been enthusiastic in regards to the course wherein we have been headed.
In ramping as much as full manufacturing, the large scope of our ambition grew to become clear. To launch and help The Last of Us Online we’d should put all our studio sources behind supporting submit launch content material for years to return, severely impacting growth on future single-player video games. So, we had two paths in entrance of us: change into a solely dwell service video games studio or proceed to give attention to single-player narrative video games which have outlined Naughty Dog’s heritage.
We are immensely happy with everybody on the studio that touched this venture. The learnings and investments in know-how from this sport will carry into how we develop our tasks and might be invaluable within the course we’re headed as a studio. We have a couple of bold, model new single participant sport that we’re engaged on right here at Naughty Dog, and we can’t wait to share extra about what comes subsequent once we’re prepared.
Until then, we’re extremely grateful to our group to your help all through the years.
The Last of Us Online idea artwork
The Last of Us Online was initially supposed as a multiplayer mode connected to The Last of Us Part II, serving as a successor to the primary sport’s Factions mode. However, as its scope expanded, Naughty Dog made the choice to make it a bigger standalone expertise as a way to prioritize releasing the single-player marketing campaign of Part II, which arrived in 2020 to crucial acclaim (whereas polarizing followers). The Last of Us Online made its extra formal debut throughout Summer Game Fest in 2022, although the studio solely revealed idea artwork and gave no launch window.
In January, Naughty Dog launched new idea artwork, promising to share extra particulars in regards to the sport later this 12 months. In May, the studio acknowledged it wanted extra time to work on the venture amidst studies of a troubled growth. In October, 25 workers have been laid off throughout varied departments (largely QA), with studies stating that TLOU Online’s growth was successfully “on ice.” Just a few weeks later, Sony delayed the title alongside an unknown variety of upcoming live-service titles.
This information serves as an enormous blemish on an in any other case nice 12 months for the franchise. Last month, Sony introduced The Last of Us Part II Remastered, a modernized model of the 2020 sport launching subsequent month with new enhancements and additions, similar to its roguelite mode No Return. HBO’s The Last of Us sequence premiered earlier this 12 months to crucial acclaim and received the Game Award for Best Adaptation. The franchise even acquired its personal haunted home at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. Although the writing was on the wall for The Last of Us Online’s demise, it is unhappy to know that it will not come to fruition.
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