Sony Shuts Down The Last of Us 2 PC Multiplayer Fan Mod

Daaamn this is cold blooded, $onys villian arc just keeps getting better and better 😂

Would be nice if they revived factions....

Woohooo! This means we’re definitely still getting the Last of Us 2 Factions game from Sony. Right? Right?!

And on a more serious note: They are very well within their rights to do so, but still, d*ck move, Sony!

Edit: Just found out the modder was asking money for it, so it wasnt some free mod for the community. I guess that makes Sony’s decision a lot more understandable

The mod access was being "sold" through a Patreon membership, by the way. Same reason why CDPR asked for a Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod project to be shut down.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but this person was beyond idiotic to make this project, fund it through Patreon, and announce it so openly. Anyone who did not expect Sony to send a cease and desist does not understand reality.

I have heard from a lawyer that companies despise multiplayer mods due to their potential security vulnerabilities.

You forgot to include that the mod dev basically sold it by asking for money on Patreon.

I mean wasn't this obvious, you cannot make money on someone else's work.

Poorly written from PushSquare by removing the true context.

What did they expect??? IDK why "fans" do this stuff and then act surprised they get a DMCA letter from the lawyers.

@RBMango I think that is the play. Make a name for themselves with a high profile mod project then try to launch an original project. I wonder how they would feel if someone tried to "modd" their original ip project though.

Sony knew the mod would have been better than anything ND would have come up with.

Finally, I’m tired of these ‘indies’ thinking they can just use IPs and then freak out when it obviously doesn’t work.

@RBMango The beta work was funded through Patreon, but the full version was set to be released for free. This process has long been held to be legal.

If taking money for development was the problem then why did Sony wait until just before it was to be released for free instead of cutting it off sooner? It's just Sony being anti-gamer/anti-consumer again, no reason to justify its actions.

I wonder how many people are gonna be mad at Sony for not allowing their IP to be sold for profit by unincorporated individuals?

Lots of skyrim modders have a patreon account to help support the artist. Thank goodness Bethesda are more open to mods. I've played some great story heavy ones.

@SirStephenH so not allowing someone to profit off of their IP is them being anti-consumer? As much as I’d love to have everything free…

Weren't they basically selling this? No wonder Sony shot it down.

Why can't we have nice things?

Patreons are getting rather irritatingly common with mods. I’d directly correlate that with the rise of vibe coding personally, and I’ve noticed a few PES modders outright stealing models from other members of the community only to sell them as part of their mod packs. The decomp scene is just a AI-riddled disaster right now too. Capitalism in action, turn work done for the benefit of the community, and for the value of doing it itself, into a money making exercise. I very much love the modding scene, emulation and so forth, but I see the writing on the wall.

@ATaco sure, buddy.

It would have been nice as others have mentioned here already to have pointed out this Modder was trying to profit from this. I guess it's not such a tasty bit of bait if the whole bucket of chum is there.

It there is some sort of monetization involved, this really should be mentioned in the article, because that changes everything.

Nah, let's hear the full story please: They were trying to monetise a TLOU2 mod. This is actually illegal.

This was not a case of "Sony bad". Sony had every right to shut this down.

This is surely a sign that Naughty Dog is planning to release a new The Last of Us multiplayer faction game and they didn't want this mod to compete with it. /s

Honestly, if I was the modder, I'd port the mod to Unreal Engine 5, replace the TLOU assets with standard Unreal store assets and release it on the Nintendo EShop as "The Lucky Ones Died First".

Another poorly done article by PushSquare.

Failed to mention anywhere that they were asking for money through crowdsourcing which is illegal.

The bait for hate on this website now is actually embarrassing.

Good, that's what you get for trying to monetize a Sony IP.

@TrollOfWar Somebody already tried that and Sony shut them down. The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival was the name

They were selling the mod instead of giving it away for free, therefore making money with someone else's property. Good riddance.

@SirStephenH Selling fan mods is not moral. No one feels sorry for this guy.

End of story.

@Jacko11 Yeah, the lack of context from @LiamCroft on this one is a bad look.

When the comments section gives you the full picture, you've not done your job properly.

It never ends. It just never ends. We really are back at the beginning of the PS3 where Sony made every possible wrong move.

Actually with Sony on this, am I the bad guy now?

I cannot stand people profiting from other peoples work, yeh sure making the mod is cool and all, but actually locking it behind a paywall? Get in the sea.

@nolifebr that was for stress testing and bugs for people on hos patreon to make sure it works

@cainhurst94 I know, that's why I said, the modder should release it on the Nintendo eShop. 😄

But honestly, if the promotional artwork is different, the title is not similar and it doesn't reference any characters from the main games, they might get away with it. There are plenty of fan projects based on popular games which turned into successful games, like Black Mesa, Cities: Skylines, Sonic Mania, Nightmare Kart, DayZ, El Paso Elsewhere, just to name a few. I don't think Sony has a patent on the "factions" game mode, so anyone can make a factions game.

Ohhh Sony being Pony is really hard these days

@JustBusiness are they lock behind a paywall like this man did I see a lot of u did not see the context that he was charging people

@SirStephenH u profiting froms someone else ip is illegal Sony has ever right to ask them to take it down.

It does suck that Sony's putting a stop to this, but when deciding to develop a mod for a game without the IP holder's consent you have to go into it knowing this could happen, especially if you're also asking for money.

@GilaMonster eating an orange is a lot like a successful marriage.

I've no idea whether or not the mod's code actually contains any of Sony's IP, at minimum I'd imagine it would contain some method calls from the base game to set the thing in motion.

Charging money for early access is dicey, but waiting until the 11th hour doesn't make Sony look good either.

Countless developer's and publisher's pockets have been lined and reputations improved by not stifling modders.

All that aside, gamers were just deprived of another Last Of Us multiplayer experience.

Hulst check with his masters at bungie first before they sent a cease and desist

What if I profit directly from a Sony ip by putting an entire games playthrough on youtube and monetising it? Is there a massive moral difference there? At least with the mod you would need to actually buy the game in order to play it.

This feels a lot like Dbrand and 'I dare you to sue us Sony', sure enough they were given a cease and desist. I'm all for passion projects and innovation, but sometimes being too close to that inspiration means you are going to lose it all when the original IP holder catches wind of what you are doing. One of my Favorite games is Palworld, I know they ripped off Pokemon and even if I didn't play it I know if I was whoever owns those rights I too would have them in my sights. The same as the company who tried to rip Palworld off, it was so good of a copy that I thought it was an update for the game until Sammy or Liam or someone said 'no that's actually a different game'. I did wishlist it and I'm sure it's been pulled, I see it as what goes around comes around.

Now that said Fallout London is the best Mod I've ever played, it felt like a whole new game and I wish Bethesda found a way to bring it to console. They didn't charge for it and Bethesda did leave them alone. Todd Howard did make hints to the project and say it impressed him, Bethesda have a human face to the company, Sony have something else. I still agree with @RBMango there's understanding the moving parts of game development (which I absolutely do not) and understanding community exposure/influence and then there's understanding the cold hard reality of business. Sony do understand both. They just need to work on the community part.

@LemanRusk Putting stuff up on Youtube is not the same as selling it or paywalling it, locking it behind a Patreon sub would put you on thin ice. Creating ad-supported content about video games is generally considered fair use.

Doesn't have permission from the IP owners and was openly profiteering from their product. You'd have to be pretty thick to not expect this to happen. Sony probably held off making contact until just before it was done just to waste more of their time. Every right to do what they have done.

LoL Damn it is too funny just how fake so many opf you guys are. If you actually had legit PC's to play this or if it came to PS5, you guys would have been all over it!! N the mod was actually going to be free at release, you could just fund the developer(s) (3 guys made this) to support the project development.
Look at the video attatched, this looks incredible! Legit matchmaking, loadouts, perks, the guys put in work! Kinda crazy what three guys working out of there houses can do...
If only Naughty Dog coulda done the same...
Or if ND coulda at least been real with everyone when they canceled it LoL. "We realized we would have to keep working on it after it came out..." Uhhh Yeah, you knew that before you even started. Plus the whole studio wouldnt have even had to, thats what outsourcing is for. They coulda make a small team of devs who were the most passionate about the project and then have them work with an outside studio, while the rest of the studio worked on Intergalactic.
The director of the game already did an interview saying the game was more than 80% done, but Sony gave them an ultimatum, make Intergalactic or Factions... And Niel wanted to do Intergalactic so thats what they did. The director was so pissed he left the industry, I read the interview on Insider Gaming if you dont believe me. Google it and it will come right up. "Insider gaming last of us factions director interview"

@Slayer25c It isn't going to be locked, apparently. Just like a lot of artists he has a Patreon where people can donate if they want to support the artist not for the mod.

Why did they think Sony would allow them to do that?

This is a funny way to try and entice PC players into your walled garden. These decisions are short sighted and will definitely impact the future of Playstation

@DennisReynolds no, the mod itself is free. The verbiage for mod authors tend to read (and I'm paraphrasing here) "if you would like to donate for the mod authors time to fund a project you would like to use." It's actually very common on Nexus

@RTGX mods are free in this scenario. Patreon treats these payments as "donations"

Standard business practise. Not everything is automatically their fault.

Ghee, instead of making them close, they should buy it, tweak it and release it!

@8bitOG I see. Still a risky grey area though. Sony should have told them to stop donations though rather then outright take it down.

Good I never like pc gaming so it is what it it.word up son

@nomither6 i mean if they were charging money for something they don't own , i think most people can understand why. it goes from being a mod to stealing copyrighted material.

What a horrible thing to do
I mean Sony could have offered to purchase it and officially release it but no they chose to wait until last minute and shut it down.

@playstation1995 word to your moms

@HairyBizRat word to your hairy ape friend. Word up son

@RBMango
Exactly dude!

Also, as someone who has worked in the intellectual property business for almost 30 years, I can categorically confirm that the moment a company stops protecting their IP, they run the risk of diminishing their position in any future infringment actions they might bring. The courts and tribunals don't look kindly on holders picking and choosing when to enforce their trade marks.

Some folk have such a simplistic view of things in this regard.

Sony is making bad decisions one after another.

@Leinad7 they sure are. This isn’t one of them

Sony/Naughty Dog should pay to acquire the work that was done and release it themselves... Though I do wonder what was able to be salvaged from the scrapped official TLOU multiplayer game.

@Shirtpotatoes75 "Some folk have such a simplistic view of things in this regard."

Yup. It's a clear case of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Many people speak with such conviction and certainty on matters they don't understand and/or know very little about.

Kinda odd he didn’t show proof

@naruball
Not really. This here was making noise around the title, people tried it and some might purchase the TLOU2 game if they didn’t play it.

@JustBusiness Can you confirm you HAD TO pay for them before you could play them as is the case here?

@lindos I can't sorry. I'm only going off what others here have said. Personally I have no interest in anything multiplayer or mod related with this game.

I've just subbed to others on Patreon in the past and know it's more for supporting the artists not for the content.

@Shirtpotatoes75 you get a like for your profile pic, loved Thundercat's growing up