Fans had been in two minds over The Last of Us Online ever since its announcement. While some believed the transition would make sense from a business standpoint, helping Naughty Dog enter the lucrative games as a service scene, others wanted the single-player experience to remain pure and free of online toxicity. Well, Naughty Dog finally revealed their stand through a recent update, confirming they have canceled the game.
Although the studio is confident that the decision to cancel The Last of Us Online will lead them in the right direction, they acknowledged the community’s patience and support ever since the game was first announced. Interestingly, according to the devs at Naughty Dog, The Last of Us Online was proceeding as planned, and the team even managed to gain clarity and refine the gameplay during The Last of Us Part II’s development. However, it is common knowledge that supporting a live service game requires an immense amount of manpower and finances, which was something the studio wasn’t ready to part with at that time point in time.
Hence, when deciding on their future, Naughty Dog was faced with two options, dedicate all their resources to a live-service game thus harming their single-player titles in the process, or focus on what they do best and deliver incredible narrative experiences for players worldwide. Naturally, the studio decided to play to its strengths and canceled The Last of Us Online so that they could keep adding content to their more traditional offerings for years to come. As a matter of fact, the announcement even detailed the dilemma they faced before canceling the online title, by saying, “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.”
What does the future hold for Naughty Dog and The Last of Us?
As previously announced, Naughty Dog is currently working on a PlayStation 5 remaster for The Last of Us Part 2, which is scheduled to release on January 19, 2024. Apart from updated graphics and a few quality-of-life changes, the remaster will also contain a guitar-playing minigame, new skins, three never-seen-before levels created during early development, and a roguelike survival mode called No-Return. Meanwhile, filming for HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2 will start in February 2024, and Naughty Dog’s co-president, Neil Druckmann, claimed the additional content from the remaster will surely affect the narrative.
On the other hand, Naughty Dog claimed they were proud of everyone who sunk their time into The Last of Us Online and insisted the knowledge they gained from the project would prove invaluable in the long run. The studio also announced that they currently have more than one single-player game in development, and fans should watch out for exciting announcements in the near future.
