The Last of Us is a console mover and a top seller for the PlayStation brand and raised Naughty Dog's portfolio as one of western gaming's top developers. On top of a remake of the first game being confirmed in the works, they also announced production of an online game within the universe. However, it turns out that complications are putting a halt, or at the very least a significant slowdown to this project.

The studio released a statement.

We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our The Last of Us Multiplayer game. We're incredibly proud of the job our studio has done so far, but as development has continued, we've realized what is best for the game is to give it more time.

Our team will continue to work on the project, as well as other games in development, including a brand new single-player experience; we look forward to sharing more soon.

We're grateful to our fantastic community for your support. Thank you for your passion for our games. It continues to drive us.

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— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) May 26, 2023

Sony continues to look for means of cracking that online multiplayer market with their intellectual properties, and at one point, the multiplayer feature in the 2013 original release was considered widely successful. Its servers were decommissioned in 2019. Plans for a multiplayer mode in The Last of Us II were omitted, as the focus remained on the single player story.

Story-driven games may remain the company's modus operandi, live service gaming has had a tough time sticking. TLOU multiplayer could be a successful app, but fans will have to wait to see how this ends up once there's something to analyze.