The Last of Us Online was around '80%' complete when Naughty Dog canceled it
Vinit Agarwal, former game director at The Last of Us maker Naughty Dog, shared additional insight about the development of The Last of Us Online three years after its cancellation.
During an interview with Lance E. Lee, in which Agarwal talks about his experience moving to Japan to start his own studio, the director shared that the multiplayer spinoff was around "80 percent complete" when Naughty Dog axed it in late 2023.
"That was a devastating moment for me because I spent seven years working on that game, and it was soul-crushing," Agarwal said in the interview. "I remember honestly finding out that it was getting cancelled 24 hours before it was announced to the public. Thats how I found out about the game getting cancelled, and it was just unfortunate, and they had to do that because they have to control the messaging."
According to the former director, at one point in development, a decision had to be made between the spinoff or making the next game that Neil Druckmann, president of the company, was directing. "So, kind of naturally, you can understand what happened there. They had to pick the game that was kind of the bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn't see the light of day."
Agarwal also shared details about the live-service push at PlayStation, which is Naughty Dog's parent company. According to him, the company pushed for the pivot around 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the goal being to capitalize on the fact that people were on the lookout for multiplayer experiences. As quarantine subsided worldwide and demand decreased, that investment was pulled back.
The director's claims match with a communication to investors in 2022, saying that it intended to make significant investments in live service games, hoping to have at least 10 such games online by 2026. A year later, however, months before announcing the cancellation of The Last of Us Online, the parent company delayed six games internally, while subsidiary Bungie laid off staff.
2024 and 2025 were equally challenging. Sony kick-started the year by cutting 900 jobs. Sci-fi shooter Concord was shut down two weeks after its late August launch, and Sony shuttered the team behind it, Firewalk Studios, as well as fellow subsidiary Neon Koi. Then, the company scrapped two unannounced live-service titles that were in development at first-party studios Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, the latter of which reportedly led to an unknown number of contractors being laid off.
Since then, the company has shut down Bluepoint Games, and is currently placing its bets on Marathon, the latest game from Bungie that seems to carry years of expectations. Outside of Sony, multiple other live-service game studios have been struggling. Warner Bros. Games pulled the cord for Multiversus back in January of last year, and the likes of Wargarming's Steel Hunters were scrapped after merely three months.
Meanwhile, companies like Sega still see potential in the games-as-a-service business, despite its current state. Games like Highguard have been permanently shut down barely a month after its debut, and Fortnite maker Epic Games laying off more than 1,000 employees, despite CEO Tim Sweeney touting that Fortnite remains "one of the most successful games in the world."
