Naughty Dog Cancels ‘The Last Of Us’ Online
Developer Naughty Dog announced that work on The Last of Us Online was coming to a close as the studio refocuses on a single-player game.
It’s an apocalypse for post-apocalyptic multiplayer games this week. We started the week with the developers of The Day Before canceling the game and their studio just four days after the release of the controversial zombie MMO. And today, Naughty Dog announced it was no longer working on the multiplayer-centric The Last of Us Online, which is set in a fungus-infected world.
However, in this case, Naughty Dog is staying open. In an announcement made through its website, Naughty Dog cites the main reason as wanting to continue to develop single-player games, revealing that there are multiple projects in the works.
Naughty Dog Refocuses On Single Player After Cancelling Last Of Us Online
Per the announcement, The Last of Us Online had been in pre-production alongside The Last of Us Part II. As the game was “refined” and its vision “crystallized”, though, developers at Naughty Dog came to a startling realization. Live-service games don’t tend to succeed unless you give them lots of support, constantly making sure that the game is actually “live”. Or, as they put it:
“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.”
Case in point, look at Bungie, who have spent the last ten years making Destiny, and they’re one of the more successful live-service games. Ubisoft tried to make their more recent Assassin’s Creeds (Valhalla, especially) into a live-service game and have since gone back to basics. The attractiveness of a live-service game is an easy one to see: get people to buy your game, then keep paying money for season passes, etc.
But that only works as long as the content keeps rolling out. And Naughty Dog would rather “continue to focus on single-layer narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”
Titles like Crash Team Racing, Way of the Warrior, Keef the Thief, and of course, Crash Bash.
Even though Naughty Dog is canceling the project, it’s not a total loss:
“The leanings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single-player game that we’re working on here at Naughty Dog[.]”
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Though The Last of Us Online is ending, two more games are rising to take its place. Exciting times.
