Naughty Dog spent years developing a standalone multiplayer game set in The Last of Us universe, cancelled it in 2023, and left PC players with nothing but a single-player campaign. Modder Speclizer has been quietly working to fill that gap since January, and this week dropped the most substantial look yet at what that work actually looks like.
What Naughty Dog left behind
The Last of Us Part II has a complicated multiplayer history. The original game launched in 2013 with a Factions mode that players genuinely loved, a team-based survival format that felt distinct from the standard deathmatch options flooding the market at the time. Part II was always expected to continue that tradition. A multiplayer component was announced as far back as E3 2018, then quietly separated from the main game, then repositioned as a standalone project called The Last of Us Online. That project was cancelled entirely in late 2023 after years of development, with Naughty Dog citing the scope required to compete as a live-service game.
PC players got the port of Part II, but no multiplayer. The story ends there, officially.
25 minutes of 1v1 gameplay that Speclizer built himself
The new footage runs 25 minutes and shows two distinct environments: a custom map Speclizer built from scratch and a map pulled directly from Part II's single-player campaign. The 1v1 format puts two players against each other using the game's existing stealth and combat systems, which, given how tightly those mechanics were designed around tension and resource scarcity, actually translates reasonably well to a competitive context.
Here's the thing: the mod is visibly unfinished. Frame rate dips show up during heavier moments, and black boxes occasionally appear around character aim points. Speclizer hasn't tried to hide any of that. The footage is presented as a work-in-progress, which makes the ambition behind it more readable, not less.
The gap between what was promised and what shipped
What most players miss when discussing the cancelled multiplayer is how much development time actually went into it. The Last of Us Online wasn't a small side project. It was a multi-year effort with a dedicated team, and its cancellation represented a real loss for a fanbase that had been waiting since 2018 for a follow-up to Factions. Speclizer's mod doesn't replace that, but it does something the official product never managed: it exists.
The mod started development in January, and Speclizer has been documenting the process on his YouTube channel with a series of behind-the-scenes videos explaining how the whole thing was built. That transparency has kept a community invested across the months of development.
September target and what comes next
Speclizer has set a September release window for the mod. No specific date has been confirmed, and given the visible rough edges in the current footage, that timeline could shift. The mod will only work on PC, which already limits the audience, but for players who have the game on that platform, it represents the only real path to any kind of competitive multiplayer in Part II's world.
PS5 players are left with the base campaign and No Return, the roguelike mode added in the Remastered version, which plays very differently from anything resembling competitive multiplayer.
The key here is that Speclizer is doing this solo, or close to it, which makes the September target either ambitious or optimistic depending on how the next few months of development go. Either way, the footage is out, the interest is real, and PC players finally have something to watch. Check the The Last of Us Part II guides for everything else covering the game while you wait, or browse the full gaming guides hub for more across the board.
