Bad news for The Last of Us fans, as Naughty Dog confirmed The Last of Us multiplayer game has been canceled, giving some reasons why they decided to stop development.

As announced in a blog post by Naughty Dog, the studio has stopped all development on the The Last of Us Multiplayer game. In what they described as being an “incredibly difficult decision,” the studio expresses that they’re crushed by this news as much as anyone else.

“We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.

We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We’re equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.

The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.”

However, despite the team being excited about the project, the decision to cancel the game boiled down to one thing, that being that the project would take all of the studio’s resources. That meaning that they’d have to focus on on supporting a live-service game for years, which wasn’t something the studio was known for.

“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.”

Back in May of 2023, Bloomberg reported that the team working on the project had been scaled back, with them reassessing the game. Last October, it was reported that The Last of Us Multiplayer was already put on “ice” as the studio was reportedly hit with layoffs. An update soon after arrived from the director of the project, assuring fans they were still working on it.

Today’s news has confirmed all that many had been speculating, but it still doesn’t make it easy to hear. While Naughty Dog is mainly known for its single-player games, it’s dabbled with multiplayer in nearly every project since Uncharted 2. The Last of Us Part 1 had an online mode, dubbed factions, that was well received by fans, and even us, where we rated it a 9/10 at the time of release.

The silver lining here is that the studio will continue doing what they do best: making narrative-driven single-player games that push the gaming envelope. We may have lost one project, but the team assures they have more ambitious ones in the works and can’t wait to share them when they’re ready.

In the meantime, studio fans can look forward to The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which lands for the PS5 on January 19, 2024.