Naughty Dog, which also made The Last of Us series, plans to focus on single-player narrative games.

Naughty Dog announced on Thursday that it has halted development on a multiplayer game set in the universe of The Last of Us. According to the studio, pre-production work on The Last of Us Online was already underway while TLoU Part II was in development. “We were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed,” reads a blog post about the news.

However, “to release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games,” Naughty Dog writes.

“So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”

Naughty Dog clearly chose the latter path. They also said that “more than one” major new single-player title is in the pipeline.

The development of TLoU Online already looked like it could be in trouble. Naughty Dog announced a delay in May. (In the same delay announcement, Naughty Dog also revealed some exciting news. For example, that it was working on a “brand new single-player experience.”). In an October Kotaku report on Naughty Dog laying off some contractors. The publication wrote that the online game set in the TLoU universe had been “effectively put on ice”.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered, produced by Sony and Naughty Dog, will be released on January 19, 2024. The second season of the hit HBO series will debut in 2025.

Source: Naughty Dog, Kotaku