In a blog post from January, Neil Druckmann, the studio’s co-president and co-creator of The Last of Us, mentioned that they would offer more details about the ambitious multiplayer game sometime this year. This suggested that the game was not planned for release in 2023. Taking the necessary time to refine the game is a positive step for Naughty Dog, as they aim to avoid releasing a product that would benefit from further development, as was the case with the initial PC release of The Last of Us Part 1, which faced technical issues.
Following Naughty Dog’s statement, Bloomberg published a report citing anonymous sources who claimed that the studio is reconsidering the viability of the multiplayer project. The report mentioned that the game has not been canceled, but many developers have been reassigned to other projects. Only a small group of developers currently remains on the multiplayer project while Naughty Dog evaluates its next steps.
