Last of Us Online Cancellation was Soul Crushing According to Director

With the massive success of both The Last of Us Part I and II, Naughty Dog was gearing up to make more content out of the popular survival zombie game. From a live-action TV adaptation, which also became wildly successful, to Remasters of both Part I and II, Naughty Dog also announced a Last of Us Online project in 2020. Originally planned as a multiplayer mode for The Last of Us Part II, the concept later developed into a standalone live service project.

However, the project was later canceled in 2023, when the developer company decided to pivot and focus on single-player titles instead. Recent reports have indicated that The Last of Us Online game was canceled 24 hours before it would have been revealed to the public. Here’s what former game director Vinit Agarwal revealed during a recent podcast about the devastating experience.

The Last of Us Online Game Cancellation

After the release of The Last of Us Part II, an online multiplayer game called Last of Us Online was slated to be released. It would have been a multiplayer online game, just as the name suggests, and no other information was revealed to the public, as the project was later canceled in 2023, before an official reveal announcement. After the project was scrapped, a leaked image of the game’s main menu was revealed on an online forum, giving players an idea of what it would have looked like.

Recent reports have also revealed that the project was canceled 24 hours before the game’s official reveal announcement. Apparently, The Last of Us Online game, also known as Factions, was supposed to be revealed in 2023, with Sony funding the project and pumping millions of dollars into it. However, with the economic downturn that took place in 2023, Sony decided to scrap the project. Not only that, according to the Last of Us Online game director, Vinit Agarwal, the game was 80% complete by that time.

Also, it seems the game’s director found out about the cancellation at the same time it was revealed to the public. Since The Last of Us Online’s cancellation, Agarwal has left Naughty Dog, moved to Japan, and founded his own game development company, which currently remains unnamed. This new information comes to light during a podcast interview with Agarwal, sharing his experience and his thoughts on the matter.

Director Says Cancellation was “Soul Crushing”

Here’s what former game director Vinit Agarwal had to say about the scrapped Last of Us Online game, sharing his thoughts, experiences, and feelings in a podcast interview with Lance E. Lee:

“What happened was, during COVID, the game industry saw a huge growth because everyone was at home. So in 2020, money was flooding into the game industry because people were playing a lot more games all of a sudden because they’re at home. What else did they have to do?”

“Not just that, online games specifically saw a huge boost because people wanted to play with their friends. They couldn’t see their friends, so they had to play online with their friends. So online games got a huge boon. So Sony decided to put a lot of money into online gaming like everyone else was. And so that was part of why The Last of Us Multiplayer got funding, and we got off the ground and we made a lot of progress, and the game was doing really, really well internally. We developed it almost to 80% completion. It was very very close to done.”

“But then all the forces that pushed the game industry in 2020 were the reasons it started declining in 2022, 2023. So as people returned to the office, suddenly people didn’t have as much time to play games. You know, that spending reduced. The economy also went down. And so all that money that flooded into the game industry was not going to be able to sustain. Because money was getting pulled out, they had to also kind of collapse the spending they’d spent. They overspent basically. They were overzealous.”

“And so one of the casualties of that was this game I was directing. Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made. ‘Okay, make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company.’ And so, kind of naturally, you can understand what happened there. They had to pick the game that was kind of the soul, 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.”

“That was a devastating moment for me, because I spent seven years working on that game. It was soul crushing. I was the director of the game, and to find out that it was getting cancelled 24 hours before it was announced to the public — that’s how I found out about the game getting cancelled, and it was just unfortunate. And they had to do that because they had to control the messaging.”