The Last of Us multiplayer had pretty big ambitions.
As reported by Tech4Gamers, associate game designer Ian Blake, who used to work for Naughty Dog, listed some details about working on The Last Of Us Part 1’s multiplayer.
In particular, his listing indicated that he worked on ‘designing and optimizing for up to 40 clients.’
40 player multiplayer on what was rumored to be The Last Of Us Part 1’s multiplayer mode would have made it an incredibly ambitious mode. Though not a persistent world, such as Grand Theft Auto Online, this would have still required a substantial time investment for the players.
For those who remember, the idea with this multiplayer mode was that you would be joining one of the factions in the game, and then spend a few in-game days helping keep your chosen faction surviving, independent of the competitive modes that players faced against each other.
Not only would they have wanted to do this to keep winning, but it would have been a unique, challenging experience, that would make their purchase more than worth their while. This is also why some of the rumors about this game had referred to it as The Last of Us Factions. We never got an official name for this game.
Unfortunately, as recently as last week, we had already been reading murmurs that The Last of Us’ multiplayer is no long on hold. In fact, the game has already been completely cancelled.
Now, it is possible that Naughty Dog will be reexploring the game idea again at another date, but it’s likely that it’s good as cancelled on paper. Regardless if Neil Druckman or other Naughty Dog higher-ups may try to spin it, if there is no longer anyone directly working on this mode, and they plan to pick it up later, than it’s basically cancelled.
As for whether those games eventually see the light of day, I would point out here that that was actually what happened to Metroid Dread. So it’s not like all hope is completely dead for this game, but it’s likely still cancelled, for now, at least.
We had also reported on hints from Naughty Dog staff that the game is far from cancelled. Naughty Dog themselves would know more than anyone, but as of right now, neither they nor Sony have responded to the public about the status of this game.
Hopefully Naughty Dog realizes that this silence is bad if the game is actually still in the works, and respond to all this online sentiment if they are still a going concern.
