The Last of Us multiplayer canceled as PS5 live-service plans topple Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer has been officially canceled. Sony's top PlayStation Studio was making a live-service game for PS5 and now it's dead.Kes Eylers-Stephenson Published 15 Dec 2023 FollowtopicsPlayStation 5Kes Eylers-Stephenson The Last of Us multiplayer has been officially canceled. After months of reporting on a supposed delay on the project, we now have official word from PlayStation Studio' Naughty Dog that the live service PS5 project is done. It looks like Sony's first major push towards perpetually online games has fallen at the first hurdle.Naughty Dog officially cancels live-service The Last of Us multiplayerComing directly from Naughty Dog's blog, we are just going to let the PlayStation Studio do the talking. "We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on [The Last of Us Online]. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.The Last of Us multiplayer"The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II — crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential," continues the post. "As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic."To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post-launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games," the excerpts about The Last of Us Online conclude. However, this gives us a really interesting insight into the problems Sony is facing with its live-service games initiative on PS5.Sony supposedly had up to 10 live service games in development, some at new studios like Haven and Firewalk and some at old studios like Guerrilla Games. One of the major issues for older studios is that to manage the live-service games, they'd have to, as Naughty Dog puts it, "become a solely live-service games studio."The Last of Us Part 1Now, we are watching the issues with forcing a single-player team to make a live-service game come to the fore. Live-service games need live-service developers, not just randomly assigned single-player developers. The skill sets of the developers are different, the consumers who have built a relationship with that studio expect different, and neither seems to want change but the publishers expect it because of the profit margins in live-service games.Not all is wasted, however. "Technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio," says Naughty Dog. The team has confirmed it will work on two single-player games for the future and all we can hope is that not too much time was wasted.So, one of Sony's developers behind one of the best PS4 games is yet to make a dent in the PS5 generation. What are your thoughts on this? Was it expected to collapse like this? Let us know what you think in the comments and we will see you down there.Related stories: PS5 Pro games on PS Plus - all six PS5 Pro Enhanced games The 28 best PS Plus games to play right now, ranked (November 2024) Call of Duty's PS5 player count jumps 136% after Black Ops 6 launch PS5 Pro upgrades start rolling out early for PlayStation Studios games PS Plus Extra’s biggest hits don’t come from PlayStation Studios PlayStation 5 Written by Kes Eylers-StephensonEditor Kes is our resident expert in PlayStation and Sony news. He writes about PS5 games like LEGO Horizon Adventures, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Concord, and Death Stranding 2 using experience from years of PlayStation gaming. He also covers PS Plus news, as well as his favorite games — The Witcher 3, God of War, and The Last of Us — before an evening swim.