Naughty Dog has officially cancelled its long-in-development multiplayer project, The Last of Us Online.
According to a blog post on the official Naughty Dog site, the studio cites the burden creating an ongoing multiplayer title would have on its plans to keep making single-player games.
The post explains how the project came about in the first place and why Naughty Dog has decided to step away. “The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.”
And then, the rub: building a live service game of this kind would gobble up the lion’s share of Naughty Dog’s resources, hampering development on the single-player projects for which it is known. “In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. 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.”
The news comes as no surprise to anyone following Sony’s live service plans. The company has been carefully dialling back its interest in live service after acquiring Destiny 2 studio Bungie in 2022. PlayStation wanted Bungie in its portfolio because Destiny 2 was considered the gold standard in live service. The hope was that Bungie could offer guidance to other PlayStation studios on how to leverage live service. The reality was very different: Bungie’s margins were proven to be vanishingly thin, and it saw first-hand the kind of immense resourcing required to keep the long-running (and genuinely popular) game from going under.
Publishers love the idea of live service because it can, in theory, deliver immense, near-endless profit if you can produce a hit. For most, however, it seems that if you’re thinking about making a live service game, the best available advice is “Don’t”.
In making the admittedly savvy decision to scale back its live service ambitions, PlayStation avoids costly catastrophes that plague studios like WB Games that keep trying to double on the format. If the sales of Hogwarts Legacy have proven anything this year, it’s that WB Games has definitely been putting all its eggs in the wrong basket.
Naughty Dog will launch The Last of Us Part II Remastered for the PS5 in January.
Leave a Reply