Naughty Dog canceled the development of The Last of Us Online

Naughty Dog has decided to stop developing The Last of Us Online. The company announced this in an official announcement.

“We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game. 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,” they wrote in the announcement.

The studio also said that the team has been working on a multiplayer game since the beginning of work on The Last of Us Part II. During this time, they were able to find a vision for the game, the gameplay became more sophisticated and satisfying, and the developers were enthusiastic about moving in this direction.

The problem for Naughty Dog was that in order to support such an ambitious project, they would have to invest all their resources to add new content for years. This would have a negative impact on the studio’s 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.”

Despite the sad news for fans of The Last of Us, Naughty Dog still shared some good news. In the announcement, they said that the studio is working on several new single-player games that will be announced in the future.