Vinit Agarwal, the director of Naughty Dog’s scrapped The Last Of Us online multiplayer game, has revealed that ex-colleagues still contact him to say how impressed they were on the game, with some stating it was the “best multiplayer game they’ve ever played.
Speaking on X, Agarwal commented, “It’s wild how many of my ex-colleagues still message me today saying how amazing TLOU Online was going to be — still the best multiplayer game they’ve ever played. Never going to let what I work on not see the light of day again. Thank you all for your support and confidence!”
The Last of Us Online was in development for many years, with Agarwal stating he had worked on the project for seven years before it was cancelled in December 2023. Speaking earlier this month with Lance E. Lee, Agarwal went into detail about why The Last of Us online was cancelled despite being close to completion. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made. ‘Okay, make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company.’ And so, kind of naturally, you can understand what happened there. They had to pick the game that was kind of the bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day.
Shuhei Yoshida, the former head of SIE Worldwide Studios and Sony’s indie department, revealed during a chat on the Sacred Symbols+ Podcast in early 2025, revealed that he had played The Last of Us Online prior to its cancellation and said “it was great.”
Naughty Dog had originally intended to include the multiplayer in The Last of Us Part II, but a year before the game launched the studio revealed that it had decided to cut the online component as it planned on making it a separate project. Since leaving Naughty Dog, Agarwal has since formed his own development team who are busy working on their debut project, described as a cinematic multiplayer game.
[Source – Vinit Agarwal on X via Eurogamer]