Sad news, Naughty Dog fans. The respectable leaker, ViewerAnon, has claimed on Twitter that The Last of Us Factions may no longer be in development at Naughty Dog.

What this means is open to debate. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll never see the game, it just might be on hold. Or, perhaps it will appear as a multiplayer mode in the rumoured The Last of Us Part Three.

ViewerAnon, sadly, had no further details. Their full tweet simply stated: “It’s Dead, Jim.” Gotta love a Star Trek reference.

Anders Howard Leaves Naughty Dog

This news follows the bombshell that Anders Howard, the Principal Monetization Designer who was working on Factions, has left the studio. Given that Howard only joined 11 months ago, it’s not a great sign.

We also learned that Jim Ryan is stepping down as CEO of PlayStation next year, after five years in the chair. This led to rumours that insiders at Sony are uncomfortable with Ryan’s focus games as a service.

Ultimately, Sony and PlayStation has built a very respectable reputation off the back of critically-acclaimed exclusive single player titles. It’s the home of God of War, Horizon, Spider-Man, and Ratchet and Clank.

Could This Point to a Sea Change?

So this could point to a sea change within Sony. With the key leadership stepping down amidst the ongoing discomfort, could we see Sony stepping away from the games as a service push to focus on what it does best?

This is all just speculation at this point, but I think that news would prove very welcome among the PlayStation community.

So take all of this with a pinch of salt. At the very least, there’s no bad news on The Last of Us Part Three front, so let’s all remain excited for that.

We’ve also potentially got a PS5 and PC release of The Last of Us Part Two to look forward to.