The closure of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game sent shockwaves throughout the video game industry, and surprised even the developers who were making it. But for one former Xbox veteran, it was the right call — despite how painful it was.
Naughty Dog stopped development on The Last of Us Online in December 2023, saying it would have needed to put all its resources into post-launch content for years to come — an approach that would have severely impacted its ability to develop future single-player games, including what we now know is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Earlier this month, the director of The Last of Us Online spoke out on the “devastating” impact of its cancellation, which he said he only found out about 24 hours before Sony made it public.
Vinit Agarwal, who was game director on The Last of Us Online, spoke openly about why The Last of Us Online was canceled despite being “very very close to done,” blaming it on a combination of factors including the widespread industry pullback following COVID lockdowns, and Sony’s subsequent reassessment of its live service push. Naughty Dog had to make a choice between The Last of Us Online and single-player adventure Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Agarwal said. The decision, as we know, was to go with Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
“And so one of the casualties of that was this game I was directing,” he said. “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 soul, 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.”
