Naughty Dog’s attempts to create a live service multiplayer game set in the Last of Us universe don’t seem to be working out too well. Recent reports have claimed that the developer’s standalone multiplayer The Last of Us project has been put “on ice”, which in turn followed reports from earlier in the year that the project’s development team had been scaled back after an internal re-evaluation by Sony.
Now, it seems key members of that team are leaving the studio as well. As spotted by Twitter user @Joanastic, Anders Howard – who was the Principal Monetization Designer on the multiplayer Last of Us game – has left Naughty Dog. A recent update to his LinkedIn profile confirms that he departed in September.
Howard joined Naughty Dog in November last year, prior to which he had spent nearly eight years at Epic Games, where he worked on Fortnite.
Recently, it was reported that Naughty Dog had laid off at least 25 contract employees of its QA team, likely due to the state of its multiplayer Last of Us game.