Behold, the glorious and "very broken" Last of Us 2 multiplayer mod that modders built in a cave with a box of scraps after Naughty Dog canceled Factions plans

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Co-op only, for now, though

Ellie in The Last of Us 2
(Image credit: Naughty Dog)

One of the great disappointments of The Last of Us Part 2 was the lack of multiplayer. Factions injected more life into the first, and offered an alternative way to play if hacking through Cordyceps was stressing you out. Almost six full years after release, modders are righting Naughty Dog’s wrong for the follow-up, and fans are in awe.

The modder Speclizer revealed they were toying with the idea of bringing unofficially multiplayer to The Last of Us 2 just last week. A dab hand at constructing such things, having made several other modifications for Joel and Ellie’s zombie-infested misadventures and the God of War games, they emerged with a working model only days later.

"Obviously it's not much right now. It’s still in the testing phase. But I appreciate the effort. Some of us were looking forward to that multiplayer Last Of Us spin-off game," posts YouTuber and streamer The Black Hokage following a retweet of the clip. "Modders out here doing what Sony was too scared to try," says another response.

There was intention for Factions to expand. Stemming from the first game, Naughty Dog put four years into a The Last of Us spin-off based around multiplayer before cancelling the project. Faced with having to maintain a resource-intensive live-service game, the studio chose to focus instead on singe-player experiences, leading to Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, the company's next game, instead.

There's no indication of when any of us will get to play the mod for ourselves, but if this pace holds, it could be quite soon. Watch this space.

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Anthony McGlynn
Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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