Vinit Agarwal, the director on the project who has since left Naughty Dog and moved to Japan to found a new studio, sat down for a lengthy interview with Lance E. Lee to talk about his life and career.
He talked about “Last of Us Online” game cancellation and how he got to know about it:
“Basically, at one point, a decision had to be made. ‘Okay, make this game or make the next game that Neil Druckmann was directing, the president of the company.’ And so, kind of naturally, you can understand what happened there. They had to pick the game that was kind of the bread and butter of the studio rather than this experimental game that I was working on that I believe was going to be really big, but unfortunately couldn’t see the light of day. That was a devastating moment for me because I spent seven years working on that game and it was soul-crushing. I remember honestly finding out that it was getting cancelled 24 hours before it was announced to the public. That’s how I found out about the game getting cancelled and it was just unfortunate and they had to do that because they have to control the messaging.”