Naughty Dog brings a golf club down on The Last of Us Online

In a surprise move, Naughty Dog has confirmed that The Last of Us Online has been killed off, with the studio stating that it has “made the incredibly difficult decision to stop” the development of the online service title.

The blog post says the team behind the game had a clear vision for the project but that the game required more development resources post-launch than Naughty Dog could dedicate. To make The Last of Us Online work, the developer would need to become a live service studio, hindering its ability to develop the critically-acclaimed single-player narrative experience it’s known for, like the Uncharted series, The Last of Us and The Last of Part II.

Since The Last of Us Online‘s reveal in 2022, we’ve learned very little about the game, with Naughty Dog showing off concept art for the title.

“We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project. The learnings 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, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we’re ready,” wrote Naughty Dog in the blog post.

While it’s great to see the developer sticking to its narrative-driven single-player roots, I can’t help but wonder what The Last of Us Online could have been. While I enjoy single-player titles, I’m also a big fan of looter-shooters, and an online multiplayer The Last of Us title built in that vein had the potential to be very compelling.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered, an updated version of the game for the PS5 that offers native 4K output in fidelity mode and 1440p upscaling to 4K in performance mode, will be released on January 19th.

Image credit: Naughty Dog

Source: Naughty Dog