IGN: ND Troubled The Last of Us Multiplayer Spin-Off Reportedly On Ice Amid Layoffs

https://www.ign.com/articles/naughty-dogs-troubled-the-last-of-us-multiplayer-spin-off-reportedly-on-ice-amid-layoffs

Naughty Dog has reportedly suffered a round of layoffs, with the troubled The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off said to be “on ice”.

The Sony-owned studio, which is home to some 400 staff, is laying off at least 25 developers, Kotaku said. Most of the people affected are quality assurance (QA) contractors who are seeing their contracts cut short. According to Kotaku, full-time staff are not affected.

Naughty Dog will reportedly not offer severance to laid off staff, who Kotaku said are expected to work until the end of October. According to the site, Naughty Dog staff “are being pressured to keep the news quiet”. IGN has asked Sony for comment.

If the game was going to suck then I guess that's good news but it's terrible that they're playing people off. I guess we know why we've only seen concept art so far. The game's basically dead.

I guess Neil Druckmann is too busy writing mediocre scripts for television now to be bothered by this.

After internal review from Bungie the Factions project was put on hold.

Yeah like Bungie has a clue what they are doing.

@R4gn4r0k said:

After internal review from Bungie the Factions project was put on hold.

Yeah like Bungie has a clue what they are doing.

This thread is about The Last of Us. I don't think Bungie made those games.

Eh, Naughty Dog, peaked with Way of the Warrior on 3DO. ;o

It's gone downhill ever since. lol :P

This mode was promised years ago with TLOU2. All they’ve shown off of this game is a lame concept art picture. They’re trying to figure out how to make a free to play microtransaction, battle pass driven version of TLOU. There were doubts from the beginning. Neil Cuckmann probably can’t figure out how to ramrod his personal political ideology into the game in a way that it won’t turn people off.

As a TLOU fan, I’m fine if this “doomed to fail from the very beginning” game gets shelved. Just don’t make promises to the community you can’t keep.

@jaydan: Bungie performed an internal review of TLOU multiplayer and said it was no good. PS reached out to Bungie since Naughty Dog only knows movie games.

PlayStation is in for a world of hurt in the coming years. They have no games.

This thread is about several people losing their job after a ND project was shut down. As per the article:

Sony had diverted resources away from the project following a negative internal review by Bungie

And bend studios peaked with Bubsy 3D. It's like Sony has only had a negative influence on these studios.

@R4gn4r0k: I see I see. Thanks for the clarification.

It's Sony ultimiately that pulled the plug but if Bungie really was the only one doing an internal review... I really don't know what to say, I have zero interest playing their games.

@Zero_epyon: So, if I were @hardwenzen, I'd be going off saying "Naughty Dog is dead! The Last Of Us is dead! Sony mismanagement has ruined a once great studio!"

But, I am not him.

All I will say is that multiplayer games are different than single player games, and sometimes even the best studios at one cannot make a great game that is the other.

Sad to see people lose their jobs, though.

Same thing going on at Ubisoft. They pivoted their teams from linear singleplayer games to open world singleplayer games. So far so good, they kinda all went and relied on the same tropes, but at least the talent was put to use.

Now they are pivoting these same teams to make COD rip offs (Xdefiant) and Battle Royale games (Hyper Scape).

Then Ubisoft blamed their developers last year when things weren't going great, go figure.

All eyes should be on Bluepoint and Insomniac at this point. Will PS5 even get a brand new Naughty Dog game in its lifetime?

This is good news. The more game developers out of work the better.

They need to learn their place.

QA was laid off this time.

If this had been an xboxs studios dev cows would be all over it,its not,it's Sony and its bad news...which means 🐄 AVOID 🐂 AVOID 🐃 AVOID

🤣

Not sure what QA do but sure they deserved it.

@R4gn4r0k: Sadly XDefiant will flop as the game is set to launch soon, too near to MW3. People will play it for 2-4 weeks, drop it for MW3, and Ubi will be left looking stupid for launching it near COD. I brought this up in the Discord and was told Ubi said they don’t care, they think it’ll do just fine against COD. Not to mention The Finals is supposedly coming soon, CS2 just launched. XDefiant won’t stand a chance.

@dabear: Jim Ryan made them create a GaaS game, and just like Bioware, that's not their shit. There is no mismanagement, its just not their genre. If you were to green lit them for TLOU3, they'd be all over it, and the game would be so good that everyone at MS would be malding for it.

One day Sony will make us a game for PS5. Greatness awaits.

Well that certainly doesn’t sound good. Ouch.

That's what happens when you make developers who thrive at single player experiences create GAAS bullshit.

@R4gn4r0k said:

After internal review from Bungie the Factions project was put on hold.

Yeah like Bungie has a clue what they are doing.

Agreed, Bungie was a terrible purchase full of talentless hacks.

I hope this is trolling.

Bungie's internal review must have been something like "we can't milk cows dry, needs less content and more microtransactions", which Jim must have agreed immediately. People just wanted Factions 2 to be released with TLoU2, or at the very least near release.

Incredibly how Jim's Sony can make 343i look somewhat competent and prolific. But Sony fanboys have been more interested ignoring it and obsess over uncle Phil.

🤣

@qui-gon-milk but yah this sucks that Sony is doing this. This is what happens when Franchise games become Games as a service. This greed from Sony and MS with this GAAS is destroying gaming as we know it. I hope GAAS released by Sony and MS fails, so they could learn that true gamers don't want these piece of sh!t lazy games that releases broken and fixed over time.

How are they finding it so hard to release a last of us multiplayer. They had a good foundation on the first one.

Its a gaas game, a gaas game must be build on mtx from the grounds up. You know, have annoyances in the game, to then sell you the solution to remove said annoyance. They're obviously not experienced into making cancerous mechanics. If this was a simple multiplayer, it would've been released a long time ago.

Not happy with this news. When will Naughty Dog get their act together and release it ffs. It's not rocket science.

omg lol

Agreed man I've seen it time and time again with the straight up COD clones. I mean it was even the case with Gotham City imposters.

Am I missing something or didn't we already know about the project status several months ago? The game was reviewed internally (by Bungie etc.) and it made them go back to the drawing board.

Contractors getting cut makes sense since they tend to be assigned to specific projects and, I doubt they have any of their other projects in a spot where they need extensive QA.

Sony is doomed I tell you! 😆

@Nonstop-Madness: Probably because people are connecting the dots between how bad Jim was, how predatory Bungie is nowadays and the cancellation of Factions 2 from a top tier developer who already did a great job on the first Factions.

Ouch... not looking good for PS5's lineup going forward.

2020 Studio of the year ladies and gentlemen.

Jim Ryan: “So long suckers!” 😅

ND hasn't been good since early last gen. Cuckman ruined them.

Lol..owned

A Sony owned company laying off staff and not even offering severance. This is the company cows support.

This is worse than the fact PlayStation has no games.

Lol, really?

You're only owned when you take being incorrect so personally. I even thanked him for the clarification.

You should maybe read the thread before being quick to sling self-projection at others.

I'm saying this with absolutely zero insight into the industry outside of what I read, but I feel that games cost waaaaaay too much to make these days. Especially AAA games.

If a studio like Naughty Dog (among so many others, too), with their string of well-received, high-selling successes runs into trouble...it might be time for the industry to take a look at itself and reassess how they do things.

Naughty Dog must die so Sony can grow next quarter.

Corrupted capitalism at its worst: killing off successful, talented creators so parent companies can pursue infinite growth.

It's not a problem exclusive to Sony but they seem to be the latest example perhaps.

Yeah man no harm done. What I said at the start is open for easy misinterpretation.

Don't mind Heil, he doesn't hang around these forums a lot anymore :)

Hey, my dear young Padawan @hardwenzen. What did I tell you, TLOU MP would make Infinite and BF look like a masterpiece. Never ever doubt my predictions.

They should have just added a bigger factions mode in tlou2 and put like a 10$ pay wall behind it and called it a day.

Calm your tits. Nothing, literally nothing is better than Infinite.