In the wake of very public failures, cancellations, closures and layoffs in the industry right now, and in particular in the aftermath of a very recent mass layoff at Destiny 2 developer, Bungie, veteran reporter James Schreier has joined the wonderful folks at the Friends Per Second podcast to discuss the state of live service games and PlayStation Studios in particular.
Throughout the segment, Schreier dives into what he’s gleaned from his insight into the situation and presumably from a reliable network of contacts, speaking to how expensive these live service pushes actually are and the vicious cycle of publishers pivoting very capable single-player studios to live service projects that ultimately fail.
Of particular interest though, are comments made about Naughty Dog’s famously-cancelled multiplayer The Last of Us project, which had been talked about publicly as early as 2018, saw various changes in scope, and then was axed late last year. Schreier estimates that the project, in at least its most recent standalone form, was in development for around four years, with hundreds of developers on the tools, and that it did not go quietly.
“Naughty Dog’s Factions game was in development for something like four years with a team in the hundreds, like, that is an expensive proposition for something that was a miss. That project, like that getting cancelled, was not a bloodless endeavour,” he reveals.
“There were some heads rolling at Sony as a result of that one.”
It’s hard not to imagine that after the considerable time, expense and human effort already made, that cancelling the Last of Us multiplayer project would’ve gone down well internally, but if these claims are accurate it seems it was just as big a bloodbath as it was in online circles once the news broke.
Schreier also claims in the podcast that Horizon’s online multiplayer project is still in development and so far hasn’t been cancelled.
You can (and should) watch the full podcast below, with the chat to Jason Schreier occurring very soon in:
