After numerous rumors and subsequent denials, The Last of Us Multiplayer game, known as The Last of Us Online, has officially been canceled.
The announcement was made Thursday night by Naughty Dog in a lengthy post on the company’s website.
“We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online,” the statement reads. “There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.”
Naughty Dog says that The Last of Us Online has been in pre-production since the studio began work on The Last of Us Part 2. Throughout the work, they say, the vision for the game became more “refined and satisfying” with the studio being “enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.”
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“In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear,” they said. “To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on 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.”
With the decision made to focus more on single-player games, Naughty Dog says it is currently working on multiple games, and that they “cannot wait to share more about what comes next”.
What do you think of The Last of Us Online multiplayer game being canceled? For more Insider Gaming, read about the future of Baldur’s Gate 3.
