A former Naughty Dog game director who led the sadly scrapped Last of Us Online project is now opening a new studio in Japan.
Vinit Agarwal worked at the famed PlayStation studio for more than a decade on hits like Uncharted 4, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part 2 as a designer, before eventually directing a standalone multiplayer project that never crossed the finish line.
After leaving Naughty Dog earlier this year, the developer just revealed a "couple of life updates," like the fact that he's moving to Japan and "also forming a game studio – more on that soon!"
There's no concrete information about what this unannounced studio might release, but Agarwal says he's currently making a multiplayer game in Unreal Engine 5 via an earlier social media exchange. "I can't speak for what [Naughty Dog is] planning, but I'm going to continue making multiplayer games because that's what I’m passionate about," he wrote at the time.
Naughty Dog somewhat infamously threw its in-development multiplayer spin-off in the bin after Bungie reportedly told studio heads how much work it would require, having fed its own live service beast for years. The Last of Us Online was initially going to be bolted on to The Last of Us Part 2 – just as the original game's Factions mode was – though it eventually ballooned into its own full-fat game that would probably distract from the studio's single-player ambitions, including the upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and a number of other mysterious games.
Here are some other new games of 2025 and beyond that haven't been canned.
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