Sony first-party studio Naughty Dog has been hit with layoffs, and The Last of Us multiplayer project has been put on indefinite hold.
The Linkedin profiles of Markos Orfanos, Quality Assurance Tester / Dev Support at Naughty Dog, reveal that the studio is laying off contractual workers. Orfanos had worked as part of the
Additionally, it has been revealed via Kotaku that the multiplayer game, while not entirely canceled, has been put on indefinite hold at this point. Earlier, Bloomberg had reported that Sony had asked Bungie to evaluate the games across its portfolio. Bungie raised questions regarding The Last of Us multiplayer project’s ability to keep players engaged in the long run, which had ultimately led to the reassessment.
It was previously reported that the aforementioned multiplayer project based on The Last of Us Factions would feature a battle pass and F2P mechanics in some shape or form. According to his LinkedIn profile, Fortnite developer Anders Howard had moved to Naughty Dog and was working as a Principal Monetization Designer, possibly on the battle pass and other F2P elements in The Last of Us multiplayer title. The move had come after 7 and a half years at Epic Games, where he worked as a Senior Systems Designer on Fortnite, followed by a brief 10 month job as Lead Systems Designer at Ubisoft Stockholm.
Howard stated in his resume that he designed many of the core systems of Fortnite: Save the World from the ground up, with a focus on combat model, economy, the skill tree, content scaling, and progression. He went on to ship 8 seasons of live content for Save the World. Later, he moved over to Fortnite: Battle Royale, where he went on to ship 12 more seasons of Battle Pass quest and progression content, owning the collectible gameplay, quest pipeline, and Battle Pass XP.
