It’s been over a year now since this concept art was shown to announce the project (Picture: Sony)

The director of The Last Of Us multiplayer game assures fans he’s still working on it, but stops short of offering a real update.

At the start of the year, Naughty Dog promised it would have something to share about its The Last Of Us multiplayer spin-off, besides more concept art. We’re now approaching the end of 2023 and the only update Naughty Dog has had is that it needs more time to work on it, implying an internal delay.

Between this and chatter of Sony’s live service plans causing a lot of internal strife within its studios, it’s easy to assume that Naughty Dog’s multiplayer project has been scrapped entirely so it can focus on a new single-player game.

Over the weekend, though, the game’s director – Vinit Agarwal – tried to assure fans that, no, it’s not been cancelled and he’s still working on it.

Instead of sharing this via an update on the Naughty Dog Twitter account, or somewhere more official, Agarwal briefly mentioned the fact in passing, in an unrelated tweet about clearing Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

‘And so this tweet can live on in peace… yes, I’m still working on that game,’ Agarwal writes. He doesn’t specify what ‘that game’ is, but you can only presume it’s the multiplayer project.

Currently, Naughty Dog does not have any games other than the multiplayer title announced, although it is apparently working on an unknown new title and there are strong rumours of a Last Of Us Part 2 remake or director’s cut.

Even though it was made in the most obscure of circumstances, Agarwal’s statement appears to have brought some relief to fans, although it still doesn’t sound like things are going smoothly at Naughty Dog at the moment.

As a reminder, the initial delay announcement was almost immediately followed by a report that Sony pulled a lot of staff from the multiplayer project, after it received less than stellar feedback from Bungie.

Then, just last month, Naughty Dog laid off at least 25 external developers, with claims that the multiplayer game is now ‘on ice.’

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The Last Of Us multiplayer game has never been officially described as a live service game but it’s always been assumed that’s what it is. Aside from fitting the criteria perfectly, Naughty Dog hired a monetisation director in 2022, all but confirming that the game will feature microtransactions and the like.

Live service games aren’t quite the hot ticket they were a couple of years ago though, with Bungie also losing staff because Destiny 2’s profits have declined.

That may mean Naughty Dog’s game is undergoing a rethink – which would also explain the delay – but so little has been said of it, despite it having been first mentioned over two years ago now, it’s difficult to know what exactly is going on.

Don’t forget, this game was meant to be the multiplayer mode for The Last Of Us Part 2 (Picture: Sony)

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The director of The Last Of Us multiplayer game assures fans he’s still working on it, but stops short of offering a real update.