Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has shared some interesting commentary on the cancelled Naughty Dog project, The Last Of Us Online.
We already reported on how he talked about Bungie as a guest on the latest episode of the Friends Per Second podcast over the weekend. But Schreier also had some interesting things to say about Naughty Dog’s game and its aftermath.
As reported by MP1st, he said this:
“I mean, Naughty Dog’s Factions game was in development for something like four years with a team in the hundreds. Like, that is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss… I mean that project, like that getting canceled was not a bloodless endeavor, there were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.”
So, how much of what Schreier said is new information? Not that much, but what we get here is Schreier corroborating earlier rumors about the project, some of which also came from him. Schreier reported the rumor that Bungie reviewed The Last Of Us Online for Naughty Dog. Contrary to popular internet narratives, Bungie did not have the authority to cancel that game. Schreier later clarified that Bungie’s feedback led Naughty Dog to make their own decision, to eventually cancel the project.
When Schreier says that Naughty Dog was working on the game for four years, that seems to be in the same ballpark that we learned about it. Our earliest report, at least as far as I can trace, on this project was 2021. Naughty Dog didn’t give us a name for this game at the time. So for some time, fans and reporters were referring to it as The Last Of Us Multiplayer, The Last Of Us Factions, or simply Factions. It got the name Factions because Naughty Dog explicitly referred to it as a modern version of Factions MP, the multiplayer mode in the 2013 game The Last Of Us.
We can identify the proverbial ‘heads rolling’ that Schreier referred to, as well. In May 2023, word spread that Sony had layoffs at PlayStation Visual Arts, a support studio who was working with Naughty Dog. On October 3 of that same year, rumors spread that 12 QA members of Naughty Dog had been laid off, and then came the big one.
Connie Booth, who had worked for PlayStation for nearly thirty years, was rumored to have left by former Sony developer David Scott Jaffe. A day later, Jaffe said that Connie was fired, because she took the blame for stalling efforts at Sony to make live service games. Jaffe also alluded to her firing being directly related to The Last Of Us Online. Sony confirmed her exit, but not if they had fired her, days later.
In December, Naughty Dog officially cancels that The Last Of Us Online. In the same month, the Insomniac leak revealed Sony’s plans to layoff employees. And in February of this year, Sony officially announced those layoffs of 900 employees, including staff at Naughty Dog.
It’s been a sad, and surprisingly well documented trip, for this game’s discreet development period and cancellation. While we don’t know how much of all these details are true, and Sony will likely never tell us, it creates a credible and complete picture of ambition, and perhaps hubris, with a lot of money and effort leading to nothing.
