The Last of Us Multiplayer PS5

The standalone multiplayer game for The Last of Us was around 80% complete, having been in development for roughly seven years before its cancellation, the title's game director has now revealed.

Speaking on a Lance E. Lee podcast, Vinit Agarwal recounted his time at Naughty Dog and the events surrounding The Last of Us multiplayer and its cancellation. As a game director, he said he worked on the project for "nearly seven years", from 2016 through to 2023.

At the time of its cancellation, Agarwal claimed in the interview that the game was made to "almost 80% completion. It was very, very close to done."

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Agarwal sets the scene for the project, explaining how Sony invested in the project during the COVID-19 pandemic. "During Covid, the games industry saw a huge growth because everyone was at home. So, in 2020, money was flooding into the gaming industry because people were playing a lot more games all of a sudden because they're at home — what else are they gonna do?"

He continues by highlighting that online gaming also saw a huge boost because people at home used it as a way to stay connected with their friends and family. "Sony decided to put a lot of money into online gaming like everyone else was. That's part of why The Last of Us Multiplayer got funding, we got off the ground and we made a lot of progress, and the game was doing really, really well internally."

Then, as people returned to work after the pandemic, the funding the games industry had been experiencing previously dried up. Agarwal states The Last of Us Multiplayer was one of the casualties of the money well drying up.

"Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made: make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing." Agawal said in the interview Naughty Dog had to choose the project that was the "bread and butter of the studio" in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet rather than an "experimental game" that he believed was going to be "really big".

"That was a devastating moment for me," Agarwal recalls. He found out about the project's cancellation 24 hours before it was revealed publicly.

Intergalactic is now projected to release for PS5 in 2027, and is the only confirmed game from Naughty Dog at the time of writing. As for Vinit Agarwal, he left the studio and moved to Japan, where he's set up a new team.

[source youtu.be]