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Naughty Dog is laying off contract developers, asking them to keep it quiet. TLOU Online "is basically on ice at this point"

I'm not a fan of Naughty Dog these days as I would prefer them to push their talents in something which is not TLOU, but this article is worded in a way to make it sound more worse than it is, for clicks of course.
A Kotaku article always has the juicy title for clicks. Maybe i could've written what kind of contract developers they were tbh.

What is more troubling is them laying off QA people who couldve helped them test their next game. But its very likely that their next game is in pre-production over 3.5 years after they released TLOU2. Its entirely possible that their next game is a 2026-2028 release.

Whoever is running that studio needs to be fired asap. Your premiere first party studio cant be making cancelled gaas games and 2nd tier remakes. 3.5 fucking years is how long it took them to make TLOU2 after shipping lost legacy.
I hadn't thought about the fact that if TLOU3 had started full production right after TLOU2 came out we would have it next year probably.
 

Kurotri

Member
It's so embarrassing looking back at that one stage interview with Druckmann. It seemed like the next big thing because you know, Naughty Dog. And now it's on ice. Please just cancel it and have all hands on deck for TLOU3 or a new IP..
 

ProtoByte

Member
The holiday's look weak this year for Sony. What's on the table beside Spider Man 2?
"What does Sony have besides the direct sequel to a 20 million seller?"

I'm sorry, are other manufacturers releasing 3-4 AAA titles in the holiday season? Is that even realistic?
 

kaizenkko

Member
I tried to see something good on all this shit Sony is doing, but there's no way! Naughty Dog probably broken at this point.
 
The holiday's look weak this year for Sony. What's on the table beside Spider Man 2?

The PSVR2 just came out and already feels unsupported by Sony. They're asleep or what?!
Is this sarcasm? You mean besides the biggest videogame Sony has ever released? No...they have nothing for this fall, lmao.

Sony spent most of the PS4 era without a single fall release. Both Uncharted games, the first Spider-Man, both Horizons, Days Gone, TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima, etc...none of them came out during the fall. Even most PS5 games haven't released during the fall except for the day one games. Returnal, ratchet, Gran Turismo 7, etc...nothing was released duing those months.

If anything, Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 are exceptions.
 
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Elios83

Member
They should just focus on the new IP and TLOU3.
If the multiplayer game was not coming along it's useless to waste resources that could be used for the other games.
 

Chechack

Member
They should stop doing all these boring realistic 3rd person shooter and start to broaden genre like do something like uncharsouls or the last of souls or something
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
The holiday's look weak this year for Sony. What's on the table beside Spider Man 2?

The PSVR2 just came out and already feels unsupported by Sony. They're asleep or what?!

There are rumors that Half Life Alyx is coming this holiday for PSVR2.
 

Saber

Gold Member
What a colossal waste of resources. Hope the next CEO shut this crap for good. I had enought of LoU dick sucking from them.
 
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"""Full-time staff do not appear to have been part of the cuts. Naughty Dog’s headcount was over 400 as of July"""

"""the majority of those laid off worked in quality assurance testing. The sources said at least 25 developers were part of the downsizing"""

No one from the main team fired, only 25 and most of them in QA, Neogaf summary = disaster in ND.
 

Fabieter

Member
3 years wasted.

Now cancel this shit project and focus on what you do best.

I can’t believe the rabid fanboys were hyping this up without realising that it was a self inflicted cancer for the studio

While it sucks that they can't get their mp game together. They always had a mp team for over a decade. I just wish they would release it already no matter what bungie is telling them.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Another nothingburger. Contract QA are there to bolster full-time staff in the push pre-release. If the release gets pushed back for re-tooling then it makes sense to let them go and re-hire when the situation changes.

Also, low-level staff like that will not be particularly well informed about strategic plans, so frankly "on ice" could mean literally anything in between a short-term pushback or transfer to another group, or full-on cancellation. Although the latter seems unlikely given that would probably result in a lot more redundancies.
 

Ar¢tos

Member
All hands on TLOU3?

Looks like only QA contractors were let go, so developers likely all redirected to another project.
I hope not...
TLOU 1 was about saving the world.
TLOU 2 was a downgrade to a revenge story.
What would TLOU 3 be about? Ellie breaking a nail?

I hope it's a new IP.
 
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Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
Was the original TLoU multiplayer actually popular? I never heard that much about it.
It was super fun, but they needed to really release this close to TLOU part 2. Maybe it will still be successful but it sounds like it’s not having a great development and the silence is deafening.
 

nowhat

Member
Was the original TLoU multiplayer actually popular? I never heard that much about it.
Actually it had a quite dedicated following, at least for some time. The problem (at least for me, not that invested in multiplayer, or at all) was that by the time the PS4 remaster was released (never had a PS3 so that's when I first played it) it was filled with veterans, so I was just easy prey. Was looking forward to this, might have been a better experience. Oh well.
 

Salz01

Member
This bums me out. I really was looking forward to Factions 2. Love the first factions. WTF is going on at NaughtyDruckman….. they used to be my fav developer.
 

Roni

Gold Member
Bigger news here is why? I thought Sony was all out on that GaaS shit after they spent the money they did on Bungie. Is SIE already rolling back Ryan-era decisions before the era is even over?
 

Topher

Gold Member
High Quality Im Shocked GIF
 

midnightAI

Member
Contractors get severance pay? since when? (I know under certain circumstances it can happen but its not the norm)

Even if this is true, they seem to be making it out as ND are worse than they are, for the clicks I guess
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Please keep it quiet; proceeds to post in online
People love the attention. I was at a studio that was slowly sinking once, and the higher ups were still doing their best to keep everything together. They asked if they needed anything they were there for them, and to please keep this to themselves because everything could work out just find thanks to potential investors, etc. Someone went and babbled to Game Informer which put the studio in an even worse position. I hate people.

This sounds rough though, I guess Factions is something that will come in due time... maybe.
 

Fabieter

Member
Or maybe SIE have the balls not to release a turd.

*cough*Redfall*cough*

We had reports saying that people at bungie were reviewing the game and it was alright but they doubted long time engagement and monetization possibility. I guess they couldn't change the game for them to rip people off like other gaas devs doing.
 

ripjoel

Member
How hard was it to just do the mp from tlou1 in the new engine for release date of part2... and then just copy DayZ (without all the broken stuff) for survival mp. Put it on ps5 & pc and jobs done.
 
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LakeOf9

Member
This sucks, I hope the people affected land on their feet asap

I kept saying this project we probably canceled after those reports we got, vivftp vivftp insisted on listing it in his list wars for why Sony had announced enough projects and people getting concerned about their output were being unreasonable
 
Super vague and potentially misleading article

What it sounds like to me is that they've delayed the game and since the game isn't coming out right away, it doesn't make sense to keep QA on the books for its release.

Likely they've pushed the release of the game to next summer or next fall and since these were contractors they're easy to let go and bring back or hire new contractors when they're ready for a QA push, mostly in line with them returning to efforts of the game.

"Put on ice" has too ominous of a connotation associated with it. Is the game canceled? Is it being put on hiatus? Is it getting limited development resources at the moment?

There seems to be a group of trolls, anti sony fanboys, anti gaas trolls (and I don't like gaas), and anti druckman/naughty dog trolls who want to make a mountain out of this, without knowing any real details
 
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