The maker of the blockbuster online game The Final of Us, which was tailored into the hit HBO series by the identical identify earlier this yr, introduced that it might cancel improvement of its long-anticipated on-line multiplayer model of the sport.
“We understand lots of you’ve gotten been anticipating information across the venture that we’ve been calling The Final of Us On-line,” the developer, Naughty Canine, mentioned in the announcement Thursday. “There’s no straightforward option to say this: We’ve made the extremely troublesome resolution 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 might have wanted to commit assets “for years to return,” on the expense of future single-player video games.
Naughty Canine mentioned it was confronted with two choices: to “turn out to be 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 possibility.
Work on The Final of Us On-line began on the identical time Naughty Canine started improvement on the single-player follow-up, The Final of Us Half II.
That sport was released in 2020.
Anxious followers of the online game received an inkling that The Final of Us On-line was in hassle after the developer shared an update in Could.
“We’re extremely happy with the job our studio has accomplished thus far, however as improvement has continued we’ve realized what’s greatest for the sport is to provide it extra time,” the replace learn.
The Final of Us follows a bereaved father and a teenage lady 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 demise of The Final of Us On-line was a specific disappointment to followers of The Final of Us Factions, a limited in-game online multiplayer experience that was obtainable in sure releases of the Final of Us sport.
Naughty Canine’s announcement drew a combined response from the gaming neighborhood 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.