Naughty Dog, the popular developer behind franchises like Uncharted and The Last of Us, has released a statement about the multiplayer title in The Last of Us universe. In the post, the developer said the multiplayer project took longer than originally planned, but softened the blow by revealing an unannounced single-player-focused game.
“We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our multiplayer game The Last of Us,” the statement read. “We’re incredibly proud of the work our studio has done so far, but as development continued we realized that the best thing for the game was to give it more time. We will continue to work on the project, as are our other games in development, including a brand new single player experience; we look forward to sharing more soon. .”
This statement appears on the heel of the a report from Bloomberg, conveyed the troubles of the title’s development. According to the report, the development team has been scaled back while the studio’s leadership decides the direction.
This multiplayer project was originally developed as a mode for The Last of Us Part II, similar to the multiplayer mode of the original The Last of Us. However, as the scope of both the single-player campaign and multiplayer mode has expanded, Naughty Dog has called for the single-player campaign to be prioritized, launching in 2020. In June 2022, Naughty Dog announced that the multiplayer component is now an indie project and share a piece of concept art (above). Earlier this year, Naughty Dog released another new piece of concept art (below) and promises more details on the indie multiplayer project later this year.
Naughty Dog’s most recent brand new game, 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, received global critical acclaim with a score of 93 on Metacritic but has divided players. In the time since that debut, Naughty Dog has released The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, which includes remakes of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part I, a remake of Our Last and Our Last: Left Behind. Perhaps the biggest impact The Last of Us had in 2023 was the first season of the HBO series starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, which received critical acclaim.
There’s no word on when we’ll hear more from Naughty Dog about this multiplayer game or the single-player project it mentioned in this statement, but with this week’s PlayStation Showcase skipping mentioning any of the studio’s projects, it can take a while. before we know the important details.
