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 12 months, introduced that it could cancel improvement of its long-anticipated on-line multiplayer model of the sport.
“We notice lots of you’ve got been anticipating information across the undertaking that we’ve been calling The Final of Us On-line,” the developer, Naughty Canine, stated in the announcement Thursday. “There’s no straightforward strategy to say this: We’ve made the extremely tough choice to cease improvement on that sport.”
The studio stated the choice to drop the sport had come after it turned clear that it could have wanted to commit sources “for years to return,” on the expense of future single-player video games.
Naughty Canine stated it was confronted with two choices: to “turn into a solely stay service video games studio or proceed to give attention to 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 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 bought an inkling that The Final of Us On-line was in bother after the developer shared an update in Might.
“We’re extremely happy with the job our studio has achieved up to now, 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 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 dying 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 out there in sure releases of the Final of Us sport.
Naughty Canine’s announcement drew a blended 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.