Naughty Dog, with the advice of Bungie, the developer of Destiny and Halo series, canceled the Last of Us Online project and chose to focus on single-player stories, avoiding a big risk at the last moment. Let’s take a look at the details together.

Last of Us Online project was canceled

Naughty Dog took a big risk by canceling Last of Us Online, a decision that was made on the advice of Bungie. Bungie told Naughty Dog that Last of Us Online might not be able to keep players interested for long. This feedback led Naughty Dog to downsize the project and use the studio’s resources more efficiently.

According to game journalist Jason Schreier, Bungie reviewed Last of Us Online at Sony’s request and advised Naughty Dog that the project may not be sustainable in the long term. Taking this advice into account, Naughty Dog has decided to continue the project with a smaller team and redirect its core team to other projects. One of the main reasons behind this decision was that the resources needed to support Last of Us Online would prevent the studio from focusing on its other single-player story games.

In Naughty Dog’s official statement, it was stated that the scope of the project was too large as Last of Us Online moved into full production and that supporting this project would severely impact the development of other games. Therefore, the studio had to choose between two paths: They could either focus entirely on live service games, or they could continue with their single-player story-driven games.

In response to a fan question on Twitter, Jason Schreier said that Bungie’s feedback was invaluable to Naughty Dog and that the decision not to focus entirely on the live-service game was a very wise one. Schreier emphasized that this decision was for the best for Naughty Dog, recalling that single-player game studios’ move towards live-service games has had bad consequences in the past.

Naughty Dog’s decision to cancel Last of Us Online is considered to be the right move for the studio’s future. Especially since you know the fate of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and before that Avengers. What do you think? Please don’t forget to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.