Report: The Last of Us Multiplayer Game Scaled Down - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 June 2023 / 4,620 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog have scaled down the The Last of Us multiplayer game, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with Bloomberg.
Bungie, a studio who was acquired by Sony, led the evaluation on the game and questioned the long term popularity of the live service game.
Naughty Dog has since released a statement providing an update on the The Last of Us multiplayer game. They are giving the game more time to be worked, while they also work on other titles in development, which includes a new single-player game.
"We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our The Last of Us multiplayer game," reads the statement from Naughty Dog. "We're incredibly proud of the job our studio has done thus 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 our other games in development, including a brand new single-player experience; we look forward to sharing more soon."
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) May 26, 2023
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I guess we will not see much ND games this gen
There are very few developers anymore that can produce more than one AAA game per team, per five year period. The nature of modern AAA games is that they are hugely labor and capital intensive to produce. And while there are a fair number of people with the requisite skill sets, they don't grow on trees. You can't just say we need 100 more developers and have them on staff in 90 days. So, even if you have extremely deep pockets, like Sony does, it takes more than just throwing money at these things to get games to market.
Naughty Dog is pretty massive though, it has around 600 employees. So almost 1.5 times as big as Santa Monica and Guerrilla games. Both made a major game within 4 to 5 years to the last game they released.
Which is the rate we should expect them launching a game. Aside from pet projects as DLC, remakes or ports. Usually multiple teams for PlayStation studios only means that a small team is doing some pre-production for a new game. Whilst the bulk of the studio is working on the main thing the studio is working on, along with half a dozen support studio's.
Insomniac seems to be an exception to that rule. As they really manage to make multiple games in full production parallel to eachother.
Where’d you get this number? I’m pretty sure you’re actually way underestimating, as growjo.com lists Naughty Dog as having 761 employees, and that site seems to be very legit—by my research, but also bc PushSquare cited them for an article about Insomniac growing to >500 employees.
I saw their employee count recently and was shocked. I thought it was closer to 400. But pretty exciting to see they’ve grown so much.
Naughty Dog is far and away the biggest PS Studios company, but it’s crazy to see Bungie has over double their numbers with 1552 employees.
Source: https://growjo.com/company/Naughty_Dog
Ah, gotcha. Well, that seems to check out, as growjo.com also says “Naughty Dog grew their employee count by 22% last year.” Taking 5/2022’s numbers, (due to lack of numbers for 1/1/22 and growth % for 2023), 600x0.22 equals 732 employees, compared to 761 per growjo.
This makes Naughty Dog now quite massive. I suppose this is some of the organic growth Sony was talking about.
So then like guess this isn't going to be a full, $70 release. It'll either have to be a free to play thing, or some filler for PS Plus and have a low price tag. Or maybe it just gets scrapped entirely a year from now.
It would be better for them to scrap the whole thing entirely than to taint that extremely successful IP with a crappy game, especially after their botched recent PC release. I hope they don't feel too committed to the game to cancel it if that's what needs to happen.
They're scaling it back and taking people off the game. That tells us there's a pretty serious issue with it. You're right that we have no idea what that issue is. But, scaling back and taking people off is not something that you do because you need to polish it up or make some little tweaks. That's something that you do because you realize the game isn't going to generate enough revenue to justify
continued, major investment.
Pulling off people doesn't help fix a game. So, we know that after review management said (figuratively, of course) " This game isn't going to work. Let's move on to something else. There's been a lot of investment here, so see if you can get something out of this. But, we gotta take a bunch of the team and move them to more promising projects."
or... their single player project needs more workforce and they feel like it's for the better to focus on this project, for whatever reason. No gloom and doom needed, ND will do the best choice for this project, they have very high standards.
If it was just a matter of pulling people off, your possibility might seem more likely. But you don't pull people off a title and scale it back if you think it's promising. You do that cuz you think it isn't.
I obviously have no way of knowing for sure what's going on here. But I've been following the industry since I was a little kid 40 years ago. If a title is scaled back, after years of production, that's bad news. And when people are being pulled off of a game, not because it's crunch time on some other title but because they are scaling back the one they've been working on, is a very bad sign. You put those two together, and I think it's safe to say that this is bad news, probably very bad news for the multiplayer TLOU game.
Scaling back to refocus a part of the game is not major issue, until it becomes one. Taking ppl off the game is just good management since they're most likely not needed until the refocussing is done. We saw this with Sony Bend when Bend management rejected a Days Gone 2 pitch, and Sony then moved a large part of the team to other other studios, like ND, instead of having a workforce with nothing to do.
without specifics, you're just jumping to the most negative thing you can think of, when a variety of different reasons possibly exist.
My first thought that's it's not going to make as money as they'd like or might be expecting. Long-term popularity is mentioned, and if a game dies too early, it's probably going to make less money. I don't think it's implausible that the game is good but not expected to be profitable (enough) for the amount of effort currently being put into it. Alternatively it could simply not be good enough for players to like it very much in the first place, but considering Naughty Dog's track record, my money's on a monetization/longevity issue instead of a quality issue (which, I suppose, fits into your assessment from a business perspective).
or... they can give the game time and make it work. No need to cancel, just make a great game that can reflect ND standards for quality, as the most awarded Studio in the last 10 years.
I am jumping to conclusions, but I'm doing it based on 40 years of observing the video game industry. The only time people get pulled off a game and it's not a very bad sign for that game is when they are moved for a short period of crunch on another title in that studio. That does not appear to be what's happening here.
Also, the fact that I've seen 0% of the game after following the news for a few years is another bad sign.
Does it conclusively prove that the game is fucked? No, it does not. But I think it tells us that there's a significant problem,
and we need to manage our own expectations.
That said, there is one sort of positive thing here, and that's that the game hasn't been canceled outright. That means they at least think there's a possibility that they can get something good out of it.
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It's surprising that ND is having real trouble making a MP game, when by most reports their previous MP game was decent.
- Even though a lot of people are making fun at this, by saying Bungie looked at ND multiplayer and said " nah son".....at least Sony has internal studios looking at each others work, and checking for some level of acceptable quality......something that Xbox never did for Redfall, at any level.
I only point out that Sony is acting better in this regard, because I have no favourites, I only favour quality.
Majority of Xbox games actually release with MP modes.
I think the expectations for a multiplayer game from a major studio like ND are that it will keep players engaged for a couple of years. That's a really, really hard thing to do. There are really only a handful of studios that have successfully done that.
I think we could say That's an unfair expectation. But I believe that is what most of these publishers expect out of major studios these days. And naughty dog does not have experience with that. So the idea that they're going to crank out a great multiplayer game because they have made great single player games and have done a little bit of old school multiplayer just doesn't hold water.
TLOU had a Pay to win model which many complained about also
A fair point, ND still needs to prove competency in Multiplayer GAAS, they have no background or experience in this area; They are Top tier making SP games, but MP? We still need to see what they can do, but I have confidence in them.
There’s not enough info to form any valid opinion here. Is it scaled back because they need to “restart” making the game? Is it scaled back because it’s basically done but a smaller team is needed to focus on the areas Bungie questioned? Or maybe it’s scaled back because they want to focus on a big SP title?
The original Factions has flaws. It’s loaded with cosmetic MTX that you have to pay for, there are balance issues with weapons, and there are pay to win weapons and perks. But it’s still got a player base that is very active, even a decade later. I should know, my PS5 is basically a Factions machine.
I hope Sony doesn’t rely on the input of Bungie too much. Destiny sucks.
You may not like Destiny, but it is one of the most successful current franchises, and has been for 8 years now. It's probably closing in on one of the most successful franchises in the history of gaming.
Cool, it still sucks.
Okay, but that isn't relevant to this discussion.
If Bungie is calling shots on this game and Destiny sucks then it’s very relevant to me.
I have forgotten about this game multiple times and got reminded of it just as much. Will probably forget it soon enough again.
They "scaled down the scaler"?
Does this mean Bungie greenlit fairgames and concord?
CGI trailer means nothing, we need to see the game. Not a fan of GAAS, but i will not judge this before i see real gameplay.
That's not Bungies job.
Speaking of Fairgames, Sony actually agreed to fund all 3 proposals from Haven. Haven decided to concentrate on just 1, and Fairgames is what they chose.
It'll be interesting to see what the other 2 are, and whether Haven now being a part of Sony will accelerate production on either of them.
good question, this makes sense... perhaps they even suggested their acquisition?
Considering the world TLoU takes place in, I can see the MP game potentially being very ambitious. That world and battle royale would go well together.
