Naughty Dog admits The Last of Us Factions is dead

Naughty Dog has announced that The Last of Us Factions is canceled.

Fans of The Last of Us have been anxiously awaiting the online version of the series. Unfortunately, it looks like the ongoing rumors that it’s being canceled are true.

Earlier this year, insider reports speculated that Naughty Dog’s online project was “on ice” and most likely not happening. Then later in 2023, Naughty Dog laid off a couple dozen contractors. Now, Naughty Dog has officially announced that The Last of Us Factions is not happening anymore.

• Related: The Last of Us II Remastered is confirmed

Why is The Last of Us Factions not coming out?

On December 14, developers explained this tough decision. The team admitted that the cancelation has “crushed” the studio but development has been stopped. Despite working on the game since 2017, the team realized that creating an ongoing, live service online version of The Last of Us was too ambitious despite having “tremendous potential.”

To keep the online game going, Naughty Dog explained that they’d need to move too many developers over to the multiplayer project.

“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,” developers wrote.

This left them with two options: Become a “solely” live service games studio or keep doing narrative-focused single player games like before. The team decided to focus on multiple single player games instead.