Could ‘The Last of Us’ multiplayer be cancelled?

The multiplayer The Last of Us It is one of the Naughty Dog projects most anticipated by the public, but there is growing concern that it will never see the light of day. As reported Kotakuthe studio has fired no less than 25 developers who worked in different areas, although the majority were in charge of quality control testing.

The aforementioned media affirms that those laid off are contractors and not permanent staff, and that the company is pressuring them so that the news of the cut is exposed as little as possible. But that is not all, since it would not offer them compensation and would force them to work until the end of October before finalizing their departure.

It is in this context that the apparent problems with the multiplayer of The Last of Us They have returned to the center of the scene. As mentioned, Naughty Dog has “frozen” its development. And although it has not been formally canceled so far, the prospects do not seem to be the best.

This is not the first time that there has been talk of inconveniences around the spin-off of The Last of Us focused on a multiplayer experience. Last May, journalist Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, reported that Sony had decided to reduce the resources allocated to said proposal. To the point that he dismembered the team assigned to said work and reassigned most of the members to other projects.

At the time, Naughty Dog tried to contain a potential bad reaction from the public by publishing a statement on X (Twitter). In it, the study assured that the multiplayer of The Last of Us was still in the folder, but I needed “more time”.

Layoffs at Naughty Dog and concern about multiplayer The Last of Us

The new layoffs at Naughty Dog would make it clear that not even the furor over the HBO and Max series would have been enough to straighten the path of the multiplayer project. Let us keep in mind that this proposal was originally intended as part of The Last of Us Part IIbut it grew enough for the studio to tackle it as a standalone project.

Since then, little and nothing has been officially known about this alternative. And if indeed its development has been frozen, as now reported Kotakuwe are unlikely to know much more about it.

In fact, the future of the PlayStation franchise has become a source of great speculation this year. In January, Neil Druckmann, co-creator of the game, assured that Sony was not pressuring Naughty Dog to develop a new installment of The Last of Us. The executive even opened the door to exploring other intellectual property.

In March, with the HBO television adaptation on everyone’s lips, a third of The Last of Us. Meanwhile, in July some details of the story and the characters that would star in it were leaked. And in the middle the details of the supposedly problematic development of the multiplayer.

According to Jason Schreier, Bungie was key to cooling plans for a multiplayer proposal. The developers of Destiny, which are a key part of Sony’s games-as-a-service strategy, would have analyzed Naughty Dog’s work and given it a thumbs down. Apparently, the company would have stated that the project would not be able to hold the players’ attention for long.