- The Last of Us On the Internet game director Vinit Agarwal says the game was 80% complete before it was cancelled
- He says Naughty Dog has to choose between canceling the multiplayer game as well Intergalactic: The Rogue Prophet
- Agarwal read the “soul-crushing” news 24 hours before the public did
Director of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us On the Internet revealed that the multiplayer shooter was almost finished before it was cancelled.
In December 2023, news broke that development of the multiplayer game had been halted, with Naughty Dog explaining at the time that they did not want to “become a studio for live service games only”.
The game has reportedly been in development for four years with a team of hundreds, but the studio realized that keeping the live service title alive would take all of its resources away from other single-player projects, including Intergalactic: The Rogue Prophet.
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Now, speaking at length in a recent interview with Tokyo’s Lance E. Lee Podcast, game director Vinit Agarwal discussed the development process and the circumstances leading to the project’s cancellation.
Agarwal explained that the game received funding due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a global shutdown and increased public interest in online games.
“What happened is, during the time of COVID, the gaming industry saw a lot of growth because everyone was at home,” Agarwal said. “Therefore, in 2020 money flooded the gaming industry because people were suddenly playing more games because they were at home, what else should they have done?
“Not only that, online games saw a huge boom because people wanted to play with their friends. They couldn’t see their friends, so they had to play online with their friends. So online games became very profitable. So Sony decided to invest as much money in online games as everyone else. And that was part of why it was. Last of Us Multiplayer we got funding, then we got off the ground and made a lot of progress, and the game was doing really well internally.”
Agarwal then dropped a bombshell, revealing that the game was actually 80% complete before Naughty Dog pulled the plug.
“We developed it until it was 80% completed. It was very close to being done,” he explained, explaining that the same forces that drove the industry in 2020 are the reasons it started to decline in the following years.
“So as people went back to the office, suddenly people didn’t have much time to play games. You know, that spending money was reduced,” said Agarwal. “The economy also went down. So all that money that was in the animal industry could not be sustained. Because the money was being withdrawn, they had to reverse the money they had spent. They were overspending. They were overzealous.”
Watch it open
This led to a huge problem with Naughty Dog, and the studio was forced to decide between canceling any The Last of Us Online or its next great single-player game, Intergalactic: The Rogue Prophet.
Yes, now we know that Intergalactic it was saved, and the game went on to receive an official announcement in 2024.
“And one of the injured in the game I was directing,” said Agarwal. “Basically, at some point, a decision had to be made. ‘Okay, do this show or do the next show that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company.’ And so, naturally, you can understand what is happening there. They should have chosen a game like the soul, the studio’s bread and butter, rather than this experimental game I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day. “
Agarwal then explained how difficult it was to learn of the game’s cancellation, revealing that he received 24 hours before it was officially announced to the public.
“That was a painful time for me, because I spent seven years working on that game. It hurt my soul,” he said.
“I was the director of the game, and to find out that it was canceled 24 hours before it was announced to the public – that’s how I found out that the game was being cancelled, and it was just unfortunate. And they had to do that because they had to control the messages.”
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