Although Naughty Dog has given up on its multiplayer (live service) project, the director wants to bring his vision to life elsewhere, away from the studio.
The Last of Us Online was a project that had fans genuinely excited, as many players are still active in the Factions multiplayer mode from the first installment released back in 2013. However, Naughty Dog ultimately decided it did not want to become a multiplayer-centered studio. After years of development, the project was canceled, leaving both fans and internal developers—who had worked hard on it and seen its potential—disappointed. Among those affected was former game director Vinit Agarwal, who explained in a recent interview with GameSpark that one of the reasons he left the studio after ten years was his belief in the potential of blending Naughty Dog’s cinematic action style with multiplayer, a vision that grew while working on The Last of Us Online and other studio projects.
Agarwal has since co-founded a new international studio operating between the United States and Japan, alongside fellow ex-Naughty Dog developer, writer, and former creative director Joe Pettini. Pettini will lead the U.S. office, while Agarwal will oversee operations in Japan. The official name of the studio has yet to be revealed. Their debut title, which Agarwal describes as “triple indie” (essentially indie but leaning toward AAA—so, perhaps what most would call AA), is still in its earliest stages of development, having only begun a few months ago.
“My main titles were Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part II. I contributed to both single-player and multiplayer design, but my primary responsibility was boss battles—usually one-on-one encounters in Naughty Dog’s games. I wanted players to feel like they were fighting against another human being, not just an AI, even in single-player. Specifically, I worked on the final boss fight in A Thief’s End and the Ellie versus Abby battles in The Last of Us Part II. I used everything I knew from multiplayer design to replicate that feeling of fighting a real player.
One of the main reasons I went independent was seeing the potential in merging cinematic action with multiplayer gameplay. While we can’t share too much yet, our upcoming project will indeed be multiplayer, and our ambition is to deliver the same cinematic intensity that defined our past work, but now within the multiplayer space. We’re already in touch with partners and hope to share more details soon,” Agarwal said.
Whatever Agarwal and Pettini are creating, it won’t be anything resembling The Last of Us Online, nor will it contain any content under Sony’s copyright. Still, it could be the kind of multiplayer experience that Factions fans had been hoping for before the official project was scrapped.
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