Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Delayed—Jason Schreier Exposes Naughty Dog’s Financial Meltdown
Hundreds of millions up in smoke, years of a studio’s energy, and in the end: nothing. The Last of Us Online is now the most expensive ghost in PlayStation history—and Intergalactic is still paying the price.
Everyone thought The Last of Us Online was just a side project running alongside Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. But Jason Schreier just blew that myth apart in a deep-dive investigation. The Bloomberg journalist reveals it was actually the opposite at Naughty Dog, right in the middle of Sony’s live-service push—a strategy that, with PS6 worries mounting and a wave of cancellations, is looking more and more like an industrial trainwreck.
Image credit: Naughty Dog
Hundreds of millions lost on The Last of Us Online
The numbers are dizzying. According to Jason Schreier, development of The Last of Us Online—also known as Factions—swallowed up hundreds of millions of dollars before being flat-out scrapped. This wasn’t some quick prototype or a few months of tinkering: it was a financial black hole, fed for years by one of the world’s most talented studios.
And forget the idea that it was just a handful of devs working on the side. Schreier is clear: “A lot of people at Naughty Dog were working on this game. There’s this belief it was just a side project while most people focused on Intergalactic. No, it’s actually the other way around.” The majority of the studio was tied up on The Last of Us Online or remasters of the franchise. A massive, all-in bet that never saw the light of day. Given Naughty Dog’s track record with ambitious new IPs, the waste is just staggering.
Intergalactic sacrificed on the altar of live-service
The direct fallout from this fiasco? Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Naughty Dog’s new solo project, which had fans buzzing after its trailer drop, couldn’t get the studio’s full attention for years. Only after The Last of Us Online was canceled did most of the team finally shift to this new IP. Schreier puts it bluntly: “Most of the studio then moved on to work on Intergalactic.”
If not for that multiplayer detour, Intergalactic would be much further along by now. We might even be playing it—or at least have a real release date. Instead, it’s still a distant blip on the PlayStation release calendar, while fans have waited years to see what Neil Druckmann and his crew can do outside the post-apocalyptic world that made them famous. Years of work, hundreds of millions spent, talent locked down—for a game that will never exist.
Sony’s live-service strategy: a total wipeout
The Last of Us Online isn’t some one-off. It’s part of a live-service push Sony made a top priority, with a wild goal: launch 12 online multiplayer games by the end of fiscal year 2025-2026. Two years in, the results are brutal. The vast majority of these projects were axed before players ever saw them. Among the casualties:
- The Last of Us Online (Factions)—canceled after years in development
- Several unannounced live-service projects—quietly dropped internally
- Horizon: Hunters Gathering—currently being rebooted after disastrous playtest feedback
The only real win so far? Helldivers 2, made by Arrowhead—not one of PlayStation’s legacy first-party studios. A damning ratio that raises big questions about Sony’s ability to steer these projects with its own teams. Schreier breaks down the whole strategic disaster in his latest video, covering every step of the debacle.
And yet, Sony doesn’t seem ready to give up on its multiplayer ambitions. The ongoing reboot of Horizon: Hunters Gathering proves it: the Japanese giant keeps chasing the formula, even if it means starting over after disastrous playtests. The only question is how many iconic studios will have to pay the price for this stubbornness.
