Cancelled The Last of Us Online game was "great," but former PlayStation exec says Naughty Dog had to scrap it after Bungie told them how much work it would be

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has said that he once played the now-cancelled Last of Us Online, which was apparently scrapped after Bungie explained to the developers "what it takes to make live service games."

Shuhei Yoshida once led Sony Interactive Studios during some of its golden years, from 2008 to 2019, before helping indie teams on the platform. He's now retired from PlayStation completely and is, luckily for us video game history nerds, spilling the beans on some lesser known stories.

Speaking to the Sacred Symbols Podcast in a paywalled interview (via PushSquare), Yoshida looked back on Naughty Dog's scrapped spin-off that was aiming to turn the original Last of Us' unexpectedly great multiplayer mode, Factions, into a full-fat live service. Yoshida said he "played the game and it was great."

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That didn't stop Naughty Dog from pulling the plug on the game in 2023 to instead work on multiple single-player projects, though.

"The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they really wanted to make it," he explained. "But Bungie explained [to the studio] what it takes to make live service games, and Naughty Dog realized, 'Oops, we can’t do that! If we do it, we can't make Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.' So that was a lack of foresight."

There have been rumblings that Destiny makers Bungie had something to do with the game's cancellation for a while, and this is our first confirmation from someone properly in the know. It also makes some sense, too. If The Last of Us Online did become the next big multiplayer hit, there's almost no way the studio could support never ending updates and development of its big single-player blockbusters at the same time - and there's even less of a chance that publisher Sony would want them to prioritize the latter.

While there was reportedly never any mandate that first-party studios had to chase the live service dragon, Yoshida also said developers had a much easier time of getting a project greenlit if it did include live service elements, so we're kinda just splitting hairs. "Riding on that gives them a better chance of getting a project approved and supported," he said.

Don't lose hope, though. There are tons of new games coming in 2025 and beyond.