The Last of Us multiplayer undertaking, which Naughty Puppy suggests it had been calling The Final of Us On-line internally, has been canceled. The studio unveiled the news in a blog site submit, citing the game’s ambitions as being so significant that it would involve the whole focus of the studio, thereby getting any element of the staff off of narrative-pushed one-participant video games, the likes of which have been Naughty Dog’s M.O. to this stage.

“In ramping up to comprehensive output, the enormous scope of our ambition turned clear,” the statement reads in portion. “To launch and assist The Final of Us On the web we’d have to place all our studio means powering supporting submit launch articles for yrs to appear, seriously impacting enhancement on potential solitary-player online games. So, we experienced two paths in entrance of us: come to be a exclusively live assistance online games studio or continue on to concentrate on solitary-player narrative online games that have described Naughty Dog’s heritage.”

The fate of The Last of Us On the web has appeared in question for some time now. Before this 12 months, it was claimed by Bloomberg that enhancement on the task experienced slowed down, with a lot of of its developers going to other tasks inside of the studio. Naughty Canine responded to that report in a statement on line, indicating it was “happy” of the do the job that experienced been performed so considerably and confirmed the progress of a new single-player match, also.

In Oct, we discovered that Naughty Dog had laid off approximately two dozen contractors according to a Kotaku report. That exact same report stated that The Final of Us multiplayer venture was “essentially on ice at this issue.” The activity was after envisioned as just one of numerous forthcoming multiplayer games from Sony, as the generally story-pushed publisher seeks to contend in the hectic dwell-service space. But just weeks back, we figured out that Sony had presently significantly minimized its envisioned output in that arena, with the corporation cutting in 50 % its range of in-growth dwell-services game titles planned to debut in March 2026 or faster.

It is unclear accurately which other game titles have been pushed out of that window or canceled outright, and it’s very possible some of them were never ever announced in the to start with area.