The former director of a multiplayer The Last of Us spin-off has opened up about the game’s tragic end.
Back in 2019, the developer of the critically-acclaimed The Last of Us franchise, Naughty Dog, confirmed that it was working on a standalone multiplayer game for the franchise.
Things went south years into development, as the studio cancelled the multiplayer game in late 2023, shelving the game in favour of a large single-player project that overlapped in production–Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
The former director of the multiplayer game, Vinit Agarwal, told the story of the rough end of his project in an interview with Lance E. Lee, revealing that the game was nearly finished when it was pulled from development (starts at minute 47:20).
How The Last of Us multiplayer game came to be
The Last of Us’ multiplayer spin-off came at a time when “money was flooding into the game industry”, largely due to the pandemic, when many people stayed at home and sought entertainment from video games.
“Online games especially saw a huge boost because people wanted to play with their friends,” he explained, which led to Sony, the owner of Naughty Dog, channelling substantial funding into online gaming, much like every other major company in the race.
With solid funding, The Last of Us’ multiplayer spin-off was able to stand on its own, and Agarwal revealed that production was “going really well internally; we developed it to almost 80% completion. It was very, very close to being done.”
What led to The Last of Us multiplayer game shutting down
However, the reasons why the online industry surged in 2020 were also the reasons it crashed years later, Agarwal explained, as the end of the pandemic meant people returned to their normal outdoor routines and spent less time playing video games.
He further explained that the influx of money followed by its withdrawal was not sustainable, and the spike in the video game industry eventually led to a sharp downturn, taking down the project he was directing in the process. “They overspent, basically. They were overzealous.”
“At one point, a decision had to be made: make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing,” Agarwal said, referring to the single-player project Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which is an ongoing project under Druckmann, the head of Naughty Dog.
“They had to pick the game that was the sole bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on–that I believe was going to be really big but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day.”
He expressed his devastation when the company decided to cancel the project he had been working on for seven years, just “24 hours before it was announced to the public.”
What was The Last of Us’ multiplayer spin-off about?
The Last of Us’ multiplayer spin-off, often referred to as “Factions 2”, was intended to release as a standalone live-service version of the popular The Last of Us universe, with cooperative and competitive gameplay featuring a mix of PvPvE.
Naughty Dog had planned to expand the game’s universe with more survival mechanics, new stories, characters, locations, and more. It was first conceptualised around 2019 and announced to the public in 2022.
Why was The Last of Us’ multiplayer game cancelled?
Despite production going well, Naughty Dog pulled the plug on the project in late 2023, with post-pandemic sustainability issues highlighted as one of the main reasons.
It was notably cancelled as the studio focused its resources on another production at the same time–the single-player sci-fi RPG Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which is touted as the studio’s most ambitious project so far.
Intergalactic is Naughty Dog’s first brand-new IP since TLOU, featuring teased open-ended exploration alongside deep narrative and gameplay content. Due to its large scale, the project has taken years to develop, with no release date announced yet, though speculation points towards mid-2027.