Following the release of The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, developer Naughty Dog had plans to launch a standalone multiplayer game. Prior to the base game’s PS4 debut, the developer confirmed this multiplayer aspect would not be released alongside Part 2, as had been expected.
Back in 2019, Naughty Dog explained its efforts to evolve The Last of Us Part 1’s multiplayer Factions mode for the sequel “grew beyond an additional mode that could be included with our enormous single player campaign” and therefore it would release separately.
The project then hit a number of stumbling blocks, with Naughty Dog stating more time was required as recently as May 2023. But, despite this, the studio maintained the game was coming up until last December, when The Last of Us’ standalone multiplayer project was ultimately cancelled.
At this time, the studio said when faced with the choice to become a “solely live service games studio” or continuing “to focus on single-player narrative games” – something the studio is predominantly known for – it chose the latter.
Since then, Naughty Dog hasn’t elaborated on the ramifications of cancelling its long-in-the-works project. However, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has now said that the move to cease development on the release “was not a bloodless endeavour”.
Speaking on the latest Friends Per Second podcast, Schreier discussed the recent layoffs at Destiny developer Bungie. During his time on the podcast, the reporter described Sony’s live-service push – along with the wider industry’s – as “trend chasing”.
“The list of games that have been pivots from single player studios to trying to make service online games that just turned out to be debacles is very, very long,” he said. “I think I’ve done postmortems for a lot of them – the cycle is ‘single-player studio super successful, pivots to live service. Spends seven years making a live service game nobody wants. Live service game comes out, it’s a debacle’.”
He then touched on The Last of Us, saying he was pleased that the studio managed to avoid that cycle thanks to the cancellation of its own multiplayer. But, even though the studio managed to break the cycle by not releasing its game, there were still consequences.
“I mean, Naughty Dog’s Factions game was in development for something like four years with a team in the hundreds. Like, that is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss,” Schreier said (thanks Dream Walker). “That project, like that getting cancelled, was not a bloodless endeavour.
“There were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.”
Despite their earlier boom in popularity, interest in live service games has waned and, according to a recent survey, 70 percent of developers now have concerns about their sustainability. Meanwhile, the video game industry has seen devastating job cuts across the sector over the last two years, as the post-pandemic dust settles.
As for Naughty Dog, Neil Druckmann recently said the developer “will not be The Last of Us studio forever”. At the time, the studio head also stated Naughty Dog has a number of games in the works, including “multiple single-player projects”.