Last of Us Online Was Reportedly 80% Complete Before Naughty Dog Canceled It

A heavily upvoted r/Games post is spotlighting fresh detail about Last of Us Online, the multiplayer project Naughty Dog canceled in 2023. Kotaku reports former project director Vinit Agarwal said in a recent interview that the game was around 80% complete when Sony and the studio decided to stop it.

That matters because the project was never publicly framed as being this far along. The new comment suggests the team had already moved well beyond prototype work and deep into production before the plug was pulled. Agarwal, who has since left Naughty Dog and founded a new studio in Japan, described the cancellation as devastating after spending seven years on the game.

Why it was canceled

According to Kotaku’s recap of the interview, Agarwal linked the decision to Sony’s broader live service push around 2020 and the later retreat from that strategy. He said online games looked especially attractive during the COVID-19 period, when people were using them to stay in touch, but that the business case weakened as player habits normalized. He also said Naughty Dog had to choose between continuing the multiplayer title and focusing resources on the next Neil Druckmann-directed single-player project.

Kotaku says Agarwal estimated the game was about 80% complete.

He said he learned about the cancellation roughly 24 hours before it was announced publicly.

The decision appears to reflect both studio priorities and Sony’s changing live service strategy.

For PlayStation watchers, the story is less about nostalgia and more about cost. A project can be deep into production and still lose out if it no longer fits the publisher’s portfolio, staffing plan, or risk tolerance. That makes Last of Us Online one of the clearest examples yet of how the live service reset has reshaped AAA pipelines.

The practical takeaway is that Naughty Dog’s future remains centered on premium single-player work, even if the studio continues to explore multiplayer ideas later. For now, the canceled project reads as a major what-if: not a rough concept that never gelled, but a nearly finished game that collided with a strategy shift at exactly the wrong moment.