naughty dogs recently shared its multiplayer last survivor The game needs “more time,” but a new report says this happened at Bungie’s suggestion.
A multiplayer spinoff of The Last of Us has been in the works for some time, with Naughty Dog confirming last June that it will be a standalone game. We haven’t heard much about it since, and Naughty Dog shared earlier this week before we heard more. In the style of those now classic apology/delay announcement posts, the developer leaned a bit towards the latter in a recent Twitter post. “We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our multiplayer game for The Last of Us,” the statement read.
“We’re incredibly proud of the work the studio has put in so far, but as development continued we realized the best thing to do with the game was to give it more time. Our team will continue to work on the project because and Other titles we’re working on include a new single-player experience; we look forward to sharing more soon.”
But according to a follow-up report from Bloomberg, it doesn’t sound like Naughty Dog himself realized the game needed more time. According to Bloomberg, Sony has been asking Bungie (the developer of Destiny that Sony acquired last year) to evaluate the various live-service games the former is currently developing. Bungie apparently raised some concerns about The Last of Us multiplayer players being able to “keep players engaged for long periods of time,” leading to a reevaluation.
In turn, the team working on the project has apparently scaled back, with a small group left behind at Naughty Dog to reassess its direction. It should be noted that the game hasn’t been canceled, but many of its developers are now working on other projects. Of course, this does call into question Sony’s ability to release all 10 of its planned online service games by 2026.
