The PvP mod that was supposed to give The Last of Us Part 2 the multiplayer mode Naughty Dog never shipped is dead, and Sony Interactive Entertainment made the call.
Modder Speclizer had been building it for PC since January. It was due out this month. Then came the letter.
“Hey everyone, as you all know, the TLOU 2 Multiplayer mod that has been in development since January was supposed to [be released] this month,” Speclizer wrote via social media. “Unfortunately I recently received a letter on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment requesting for the mod not to be released. Extremely sad that this never got to see the light of day but I hope you’ll continue to follow me onto the next project, this time something of my own.”
It wasn’t exactly hiding
Back in June, Speclizer posted 25 minutes of gameplay, along with the detail that work started in January 2026 and the mod was targeting a release this month.
There was also a Patreon attached to development. Money changing hands over a mod built on someone else’s game is not the kind of thing that stays off a publisher’s radar for long.
The multiplayer that keeps not happening
For anyone still holding out for competitive Last of Us, this is the second closed door. Naughty Dog scrapped its own official multiplayer project set in the series’ world in late 2023.
The studio’s reasoning at the time: shipping it as planned would have meant pouring all of its resources into post-launch content for years, which would have kneecapped its ability to make future single-player games.
The interesting part is what people who actually played it have said since.
The people who saw it won’t stop talking about it
Former Sony Interactive Entertainment executive Shuhei Yoshida said he’d played The Last of Us Online and thought it was “great.”
And Vinit Agarwal, who directed it, still hears from former colleagues. They message him to say it was “the best multiplayer game they’ve ever played.”
Nobody outside those rooms will ever find out. Speclizer’s version was the closest anyone was going to get, and it’s now 25 minutes of footage and a canceled Patreon.
