Last Of Us Online Dev Says It Was Around ‘80 Percent’ Complete Before Its ‘Soul-Crushing’ Cancellation

    Posted by yourfavchoom

    26 Comments

    1. AnubisIncGaming on

      this kind of waste is always just stupid, it’s got to be better to let the game come out to see who will buy it than to cancel when you’re basically at the finish line, cancelling release isn’t going to get years of wage and overhead back, just release the freakin game

    2. yourfavchoom on

      **Vinit Agarwal** (director of the game):

      > Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made. **‘Okay, make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company.’ And so, kind of naturally, you can understand what happened there.** They had to pick the game that was kind of the bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day. That was a devastating moment for me because I spent seven years working on that game and it was soul-crushing.

      > I remember honestly finding out that it was getting **cancelled 24 hours before it was announced to the public.** **That’s how I found out about the game getting cancelled** and it was just unfortunate and they had to do that because they have to control the messaging.

    3. I just want the factions multiplayer from the original PS3 TLoU. Is that too much to ask?

    4. TechnologyMost7494 on

      It was the right call, it takes massive effort just to support a live service game after it comes out.

    5. BigBoi1159511 on

      Could’ve been Sonys Arc Raiders but those apes had to listen to a washed up Bungie that hasn’t released anything good since Halo Reach😔

    6. StaticSilencer on

      Live services games require continual manpower and resources, and according to Jason Schreier a majority of the team wanted to get back to narrative driven games.

    7. I was SO excited about this multiplayer. It was BY FAR my # 1 played multiplayer. It was so good

    8. I don’t understand why they could not spin up a second team to support this game after it’s launch, and how does this even happen like they didn’t realize you need to keep supporting the game after launch like how does that sneak up on team. “Oh shoot I didn’t realize we’d need to keep supporting a LIVE SERVICE game”. So stupid this game would have sold gang busters.

    9. “80% done” in terms of software and game development doesn’t necessarily mean much because that last 10% takes the longest.

    10. but concord was approved for release…

      Herman Hulst’s taste in online games is….. questionable.

    11. CantFeelMyToesAgain on

      Bruh 24 hours before it was going to be released to the public 💀💀💀💀

    12. Honestly if it was just Arcraiders with a Last of Us skin and gameplay, it would have been a day one buy for me.

    13. They could have just released a package with the content that was ready. No one expected a several year long live service game. If you communicate what the player gets for his or her money no one would have complained.

      Jesus I just hope all assets can be used for the last of us part 3

    14. After arc raiders success I’m sure Sony is kicking themselves

      This game would have been massive.

    15. Come on, man. All they needed to do was get it across the finish line, and a studio could have been spun up to support it.

      I can imagine a bunch of these Fortnite layoffs would be down for a gig like that, even if it takes time to learn Naughty Dog’s tech and style.

    16. Permanent_Ephemera on

      Bummer for them, excellent for everyone else. Naughty Dog seemed like they lost the plot there for a second and this over service pvp game was going to do nothing but make them look bad. Nobody asked for it, nobody wants it.

    17. Starkiller100 on

      I love the original games multiplayer, but it does seem that scope might have got out of control a bit too much on this one. I would have gladly settled on more on a standalone version of the originals multiplayer with more maps and weapons.

    18. This was one of the games I was really looking forward to, but I also didn’t want to see a studio like Naughty Dog become a live service studio, it was super conflicting for me.

    19. TheStinkySlinky on

      LOL “soul crushing” is ridiculous. Factions 2 launching literally would’ve ruined the soul of Naughty Dog as a whole. Was 100% the right move, and this is just one person upset that their project didn’t come to fruition.

    20. AdamantiumLive on

      It‘s batshit insane almost as much time has passed since Part II‘s release as had passed between the Original Part I and Part II.

      2013 to 2020 feels like an eternity, so much happened in my life in that timespan, the time until Part II felt like a journey I accomplished. Now nearly 6 years have passed and it‘s an entirely different feeling…

    21. Cautious_Catch4021 on

      Cancelling a game worth 7 years of work with 80% work done

      Should not be thing

    22. This will always be a bad call.

      The studio could have easily dedicated a team to supporting it while keeping the core team to develop their traditional ND games.

      It was likely to be a success and would have brought in a lot of revenue for the studio to enable them to do great things.

      As it stands we don’t have any new releases from ND on PS5. They said they didn’t want to get stuck supporting the multiplayer game but instead they haven’t given us anything.