Naughty Dog cancels The Last of Us Online. According to the developer, maintaining and updating the game’s multiplayer as a live service title requires a lot of work, negatively impacting the company’s single-player games.

In a blog post The American company writes that since the development of The Last of Us Part II, which began sometime before 2020, it has been working on what is called The Last of Us Online in the blog post. The game’s multiplayer gameplay is already said to have been relatively improved, and the company says it was excited about the direction the game was taking.

However, according to Naughty Dog, it wasn’t until production ramped up that it became clear that the full force of the studio would be necessary to continue work on the game post-release. “We had two choices: become just a live-service game studio or focus on the single-player stories that define Naughty Dog’s legacy.”

The company says that investments in the canceled title were not in vain and that some of the technologies developed for this purpose could be used in future games. Naughty Dog says it’s working on several single-player games. Sony announced about a month ago that half of the live service’s scheduled games had been postponed. Sony Interactive Entertainment is the parent company of Naughty Dog.

This isn’t the first time Naughty Dog has ended up canceling a multiplayer game. In 2019 The faction status has been announced Before the release of the second part of The Last of Us stopped. In 2021, recruitment has begun for a multiplayer indie game, which will likely be The Last of Us Online. The title was never announced in detail and was delayed internally earlier this year.