As excited as players might be for the next mainline game in The Last Of Us franchise, wherever Naughty Dog goes with the studio, it’s arguable that more fans of the series were looking forward to the return of The Last Of Us Online or Factions, as it was called when the original launched.
Players were told that a multiplayer offering was on the way, and early on it seemed like a glorious return for the surprise hit multiplayer mode from the original PS3 title was in store. At least until it was cancelled right at the end of 2023.
At the time, while developers mourned a project they loved working on, players found solace in the knowledge that Naughty Dog chose to stick to its single-player roots rather than overhaul the whole studio into a multiplayer live service house. But cancelling a project that was in development for years had a cost.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier claims that the cost wasn’t just losing out on the project, but that it resulted in “heads rolling at Sony,” which is to say that staff at Naughty Dog lost their jobs.
During a guest spot on the Friends Per Second podcast, while talking about Sony’s live service strategy and its viability, Schreier spoke on what took place at Naughty Dog, suggesting, like most have, that the cancellation was for the better – while also claiming it was not a “bloodless endeavour.”
“Naughty Dog’s ‘Factions’ game was in development for something like four years, with a team in the hundreds. That is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss.
And that project, that getting cancelled was not a bloodless endeavour, there were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.”
It’s not a surprise to hear this, and while this is just Schreier saying it, he’s got a good enough track record as a reporter to be taken seriously with something like this.
Now that it has cancelled though, it’ll be interesting to see if this has impacted Naughty Dog’s relationship with Sony’s leadership in any way. That is, will Sony be scrutinizing Naughty Dog in a way it might not have previously?
We’ll have to see with how Naughty Dog’s next game goes.
Source – [Friends Per Second Podcast]