Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Online reached roughly 80 percent completion before the studio pulled the plug, former project director Vinit Agarwal confirmed in a recent podcast interview.

Agarwal spent seven years leading development on what he described as an experimental multiplayer title that was 'doing really really well internally.' The cancellation stemmed from Sony's post-COVID spending cuts—after a 2020-2021 boom in online gaming—the studio prioritized Neil Druckmann's next single-player game, labeled the 'soul bread-and-butter' of Naughty Dog over Agarwal's project. He learned of the decision just 24 hours before the public announcement in December 2023, calling it a 'devastating' and 'soul-crushing' moment.

The axing coincided with significant layoffs across Sony, as reported at the time, highlighting the human cost of such pivots. Community reactions on X echo the sentiment, with users like @DomTheBomb sharing Agarwal's quotes and lamenting the lost potential.

Today, Naughty Dog has shifted resources to Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and an unspecified title. Agarwal's account exposes the ruthless math of studio decision-making: even a near-finished game bows to the spreadsheet.