Back in June 2022, when Naughty Dog finally confirmed that The Last of Us was coming to PC, it also announced that a new, standalone multiplayer game based on The Last of Us was in development too. It was originally meant to be an expansion for The Last of Us 2, but Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann said at the time that it had “evolved beyond the team’s ambition,” and so the decision was made to turn it into a standalone game instead. Platforms weren’t announced at the time, although we speculated that the live service aspects of the game would make it a good candidate for a PC release.
More information was promised for 2023, and today we got it, but it’s probably not what any TLOU fan was hoping for. Naughty Dog announced Friday that the game isn’t ready to be shown yet, and apparently won’t be for a while to come.
“We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our The Last of Us multiplayer game,” the studio said. “We’re incredibly proud of the job our studio has done thus far, but as development continued, we’ve realized what is best for the game is to give it more time.
“Our team will continue to work on the project, as well as our other games in development, including a brand-new singleplayer experience; we look forward to sharing more soon.”
According to a Bloomberg report, Naughty Dog parent company Sony has actually slowed development of the project and reduced the number of people working on it while it reassesses its quality and viability. That’s not a great sign for a game that’s been in development for three years already.
Interestingly, the Bloomberg report says the decision to pump the brakes on Naughty Dog’s multiplayer game was prompted by a different Sony studio: Bungie, the developer of Destiny 2. Sony reportedly asked Bungie to take a look at all its live service games (presumably because Bungie specializes in that sort of thing) and it apparently had some doubts about the long-term viability of The Last of Us multiplayer.
The sting of The Last of Us multiplayer’s slowdown is blunted somewhat by the announcement of an all-new singleplayer game, which has long been where Naughty Dog excels. Sadly, it will likely be a long time before it comes to PC: PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said last week that while Sony wants to continue bringing games to PC, it also remains committed to “increasing the number of PS5-exclusive titles and staggering the release of the PC version.”