One of the greatest tragedies in Sony’s live-service culls was the cancellation of The Last of Us Factions, the standalone sequel to the surprisingly great multiplayer mode from the original PS3 game. While Sony is still sending live-service games over the top despite the 180 in philosophy, this beloved multiplayer component is officially dead in the dirt. Well, as far as Naughty Dog and Sony are concerned.
Modder Speclizer thinks otherwise, as they’ve been working on a multiplayer mode for The Last of Us Part 2 on PC since the start of the year, which is planned to launch in September 2026. Just yesterday, the modder revealed that his project has “hit quite a big milestone.” The mod can now handle proper 4v4 matches, where it was previously limited to 1v1s.
Speclizer regularly shows off what they’ve been working on via X. For example, it now also has a functioning leaderboard, and recently added the Seraphite Forest map to complement the Houses map previously shown off.
A major focus now is “exploring the methods of animation sync” to replicate the incredibly smooth, dynamic animations used in Naughty Dog’s projects. As far as I understand it, in The Last of Us Part 2, only the player character has access to the full suite of animations—NPCs have different movements, which the modder realised when initially jerryrigging multiplayer functionality.