While most member of a franchise community migrate to a new game when it is releases, some older installments are so popular that they maintain their online player base years after release. Unfortunately, most of those gamers have to move on eventually, namely when online support for those games is discontinued. Unfortunately for fans, this is the case for Uncharted 2 & 3, as well as the Last of Us on PS3.
To be fair to Naughty Dog, this change wasn’t an unannounced surprise that caught players off guard. They admitted that this would be happening back in June, but only now do we have to actually deal with the unfortunate reality. By now, multiplayer functionality for all of these PS3 games has been discontinued.
Back when Naughty Dog announced that this was going to happen, they were generous enough to make all of the multiplayer DLC for these games free, so at least that’s a plus, but even so, now fans of the multiplayer aspect of these games will have to move on to newer PlayStation 4 titles to get their fix. The only upside is that those newer PS4 titles, namely The Last of Us and Uncharted 4, still have multiplayer functionality for everyone to enjoy, and it’s unlikely that is going to change anytime soon, considering that the PS4 is still the most modern Sony console. Even with the PS5 coming out relatively soon, it’s unlikely that PlayStation 4 will have any of its multiplayer game services discontinued for at least several years.
Still, for those that really enjoyed the multiplayer of those older games, it’s a sad day indeed. It’s always disheartening to learn that a game you love to play won’t be available any longer, at least in the sense of being able to play it online with the community. But at least those gamers have the sequels that they can migrate to, with multiplayer modes that are at least reminiscent of what they know and love. It’s a far better fate than having an old game you love being discontinued, and not having anything similar to move onto. So at least fans of these older Naughty Dog games don’t have it all bad, and there are some options for them to turn to in this time of need.
