The Last of Us Online has been canceled, here’s why

If you are a The Last of Us fan or Naughty Dog fan, then you were hit with some pretty disappointing news. Naughty Dog has announced that The Last of Us Online has been cancelled.

The news regarding The Last of Us online was announced via Naughty Dog’s official website. The team would go on to explain as to why they are making the decision as they know this news is going to upset a lot of gamers.

For those who were unaware about this upcoming project from Naughty Dog, The Last of Us Online was going to take The Last of Us franchise into a slightly different direction and have a game dedicated around a multiplayer experience. A complete 180 degrees from the beautiful single player narrative we have seen in the past, which is ultimately the reason as to why the franchise has grown into what it is today.

Why is The Last of Us Online being cancelled?

Now even though on online multiplayer game was being created for The Last of Us, that didn’t mean that this was going to be the new direction going forward for the franchise. Naughty Dog wanted to dabble with this new idea and see how things go. Unfortunately, this idea has been squashed.

Naughty Dog went on to explain in their update on the game that the main reason as to why the game was being cancelled was due to the fact that The Last of Us online would require the studio to put all their “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.”

Obviously, when a gaming studio was built from the ground up on a single-player experience, the thought is that they are going to continue to live by that model because it has worked so well in the past.

Naughty Dog also had a bunch of workers laid off back in October which was also making this project really hard to work on and even had to be put on hold for a bit. With there being less workers at Naughty Dog, they focus had to shift to other single-player projects that they have planned for the future and that is why this devastating decision has been made.

Naughty Dog did confirm in their statement that they do indeed have a couple of single player experiences in the works, and those will become the main focus going forward. Instead of cancelling all of their future single player projects, they have decided cancelling one multiplayer project would be the way to go.

With how big The Last of Us has grown since 2013, the news of this cancellation is of course going to be hard to hear. However, this won’t stop The Last of Us universe from growing. Naughty Dogs has The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered set to be released on January 19, 2024. Plus, HBO Confirmed earlier this year that a second season of The Last of Us TV Show is in the works, so there will be plenty of The Last of Us content for many years to come.