When we received the official confirmation that Naughty Dog had cancelled The Last of Us Online, fans were understandably upset. Naughty Dog fans were looking forward to the return of The Last Of Us’ Factions mode, in a bigger scale fitting the modern live service zeitgeist. A faulty narrative had formed around its cancellation, and now we get further clarity on how it actually played out.
If you were to believe fanboys, Bungie decided to cancel The Last Of Us Online, but that was never rumored or reported, and was a misrepresentation of the finer details. So, let’s review what was actually reported.
Jason Schreier initially shared information that Bungie had been involved with The Last of Us Online, and we’ll get specific on what happened here. At Sony’s behest, Bungie reviewed The Last of Us Online for Naughty Dog. They then advised Naughty Dog that they weren’t certain that it could retain the attention of players for very long.
Schreier then reported that The Last of Us Online was scaled down to a smaller project with a smaller team after this, with most of Naughty Dog working on something else, likely, the PlayStation 5 port of The Last of Us Part 2.
In Naughty Dog’s official announcement, they revealed worries that it would take away too much time from them to work on other games. In their words:
“In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. 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.
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.”
And this where we skip ahead to here and now. Jason Schreier shared new insights, replying to a fan on Twitter inquiring on what Bungie did in relation to The Last of Us Online’s cancellation. To quote Schreier:
“Bungie gave Naughty Dog feedback that Naughty Dog found extremely helpful when making what was likely a very smart decision to not go all in on a service game.
People lamenting this cancellation should really look at the history of single-player studios pivoting to make service games such as Anthem, Suicide Squad, Marvel’s Avengers, Redfall, and so on.”
We would have to assume these are new revelations Schreier learned, since it does paint a different picture compared to his original report. We know for sure that Bungie did not order for The Last of Us Online to be cancelled. But it originally seemed like they helped set things in motion for that cancellation, outside of Naughty Dog’s control.
As it turns out, Bungie’s advice was good, because it seemed to have helped Naughty Dog avoid entering the big bomb that is live service. Even if Sony has a need for new live service projects now, and that a Naughty Dog live service game could have been huge, would it have really been the best decision?
There was already a report on what amount of profits The Last of Us Online would need to make the enterprise worthwhile, and as acclaimed and successful as they are, it may have been unfair to expect them to make the next Fortnite. And the reputational damage of potentially failing on this could have been catastrophic, and of course, needless.
So Sony fans may need to take some time to reflect on this, that The Last of Us Online getting cancelled might have been a good thing. Without a potentially fraught entry into live service, Naughty Dog could keep making the games they are most successful at.
