The Last of Us Online’s Director Says It Was “80% Complete” Before Being Cancelled

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It’s disappointing whenever a promising project gets canceled, and we were especially bummed to hear Sony scrapped the planned multiplayer game set in The Last of Us universe. The idea of teaming up with friends to fight infected in an online world based on Naughty Dog’s popular franchise sounded amazing, and we really hoped it would happen.

Former game director Vinit Agarwal recently discussed the cancellation of the game in an interview with the Lance E. Lee Podcast (as transcribed by Kotaku), sharing his disappointment after dedicating so much time and effort to the project.

Finding out the game was cancelled was incredibly difficult for me. I’d poured seven years of work into it, and the news was truly heartbreaking. I actually learned about the cancellation only 24 hours before the public announcement. It was a tough situation, but the company needed to manage how the information was released.

He mentioned the project was nearly finished, about 80% done, and expressed understanding for Naughty Dog’s choice to prioritize a more secure path with the project Neil Druckmann was leading.

Ultimately, the company had to choose between continuing work on my experimental game and moving forward with the next project from Neil Druckmann, who was the studio president. They decided to prioritize the game that was already a reliable success for them, which meant my project, though I believed it had great potential, was cancelled.

Agarwal successfully started a new game studio and is developing a title that builds on his experiences from working on The Last of Us Online. Although details are currently limited, we’re excited to see how he applies those lessons and if the new game will offer a hint of what The Last of Us Online could have become.

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2026-04-02 17:41