The maker of the blockbuster online game The Final of Us, which was tailored into the hit HBO collection by the identical identify earlier this yr, introduced that it will cancel improvement of its long-anticipated on-line multiplayer model of the sport.
“We notice lots of you might have been anticipating information across the venture that we’ve been calling The Final of Us On-line,” the developer, Naughty Canine, mentioned within the announcement Thursday. “There’s no simple strategy to say this: We’ve made the extremely troublesome choice to cease improvement on that sport.”
The studio mentioned the choice to drop the sport had come after it grew to become clear that it will have wanted to commit assets “for years to come back,” on the expense of future single-player video games.
Naughty Canine mentioned it was confronted with two choices: to “turn into a solely dwell service video games studio or proceed to deal with single-player narrative video games which have outlined Naughty Canine’s heritage.” It selected the second choice.
Work on The Final of Us On-line began on the similar time Naughty Canine started improvement on the single-player follow-up, The Final of Us Half II.
That sport was launched in 2020.
Anxious followers of the online game bought an inkling that The Final of Us On-line was in hassle after the developer shared an replace in Could.
“We’re extremely pleased with the job our studio has performed thus far, however as improvement has continued we’ve realized what’s greatest for the sport is to present it extra time,” the replace learn.
The Final of Us follows a bereaved father and a teenage woman because the unlikely pair traverses a postapocalyptic America ravaged by the worldwide outbreak of a zombifying fungal an infection.
The plot was critically acclaimed after the sport’s launch in 2013, and the 2023 tv adaptation starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey earned two dozen Emmy Award nominations.
The loss of life of The Final of Us On-line was a specific disappointment to followers of The Final of Us Factions, a restricted in-game on-line multiplayer expertise that was accessible in sure releases of the Final of Us sport.
Naughty Canine’s announcement drew a blended response from the gaming group on-line.
Some agreed that the studio was higher off specializing in new single-player video games, whereas others questioned the studio’s obvious lack of foresight.
