Principal Designer Leaves Naughty Dog Amidst Last of Us Multiplayer Development Struggles: What This Means for the Future of the Game

Just a day after Naughty Dog reportedly laid off “dozens” of contract employees who were working on its supposedly still coming Last Of Us multiplayer title, said to be Factions, the principal monetization designer on the game has left the studio;

Spotted first by NaughtyDogInfo on Twitter, designer Anders Howard now has his time at Naughty Dog listed as ending September 2023 on his LinkedIn profile.

Source

Howard was in the position for only 11 months, and on top of the layoffs this doesn’t all seem to bode well for this multiplayer title Naughty Dog has been pouring seemingly a lot of resources into.

After Bungie looked at the game and cast doubt on it being viable for a long-running live service, Naughty Dog has “scaled down” the project, as it claims it is “re-evaluating” the projects direction.

Factions as a multiplayer add on to the original The Last Of Us was a surprise hit in every sense.

In a time where multiplayer modes were being added to every game, simply because having an online multiplayer mode seemed vital to publishers, no one could have expected Factions to be as popular as it was.

But it ended up having a community of players that still play it even today, and while the return of Factions may have once seemed like a glowing opportunity, its seemingly struggled development cycle might seal its fate before players even get their hands on it.

At the very least we also know that it’s not all multiplayer focus at Naughty Dog, as we know it is working on a new single player project.

Source – NaughtyDogInfo on Twitter