The Last of Us Part 2 modders are looking to do what Naughty Dog sadly couldn't and finally come out with a worthy successor to The Last of Us Factions, the first game's surprisingly thrilling multiplayer mode.
The Last of Us Factions launched in an era where single-player games regularly came out with supplementary online modes that mostly felt like afterthoughts, but Factions' tense scrambles and meta progression made it a fan-favorite regardless – so much so that Naughty Dog eventually started working on a standalone follow-up called The Last of Us Online, which fell victim to PlayStation's flailing live-service plans.
Modder Speclizer isn't letting the dream of The Last of Us Online die so easily, though. Work on a multiplayer mod for The Last of Us Part 2 began at the start of the year, and the team recently "hit quite a big milestone" to get competitive 4v4 matches working ahead of the project's planned launch in September (thanks, PC Gamer). The mod previously only supported 1v1 and then 2v2 games.
Today we hit quite a big milestone in the development of the TLOU 2 Multiplayer mod, we can now have matches up to 4v4, previously we were limited to 1v1s only. Here's some highlights from a few of our 2v2 matches!#TheLastofUsMultiplayer pic.twitter.com/Kwj3Ry1o1QJuly 28, 2026
The modder has been pretty open about the mod's progress for months now. As recently as last week, they were "looking to implement Naughty Dog level animation sync" and were exploring how the studio pulled it off in Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Factions.
There's no telling how feature-full or beefed up the mod will be come September, but it's shaping up to be a really ambitious fan-made outing based on the info that's already public. Leaderboards are in, there's a map based on the sequel's Seraphite Forest area, the mod's pause menu is a replica of the original Factions one, and there's even a matchmaking system.
Basically, the mod has a couple months to go and already looks like it's a full-fledged, competent online translation of a famously single-player series, using the basic bones and assets and animations from The Last of Us Part 2. We might never find out what Naughty Dog had in store with The Last of Us Online, but PC players can get finally get a taste of the series' multiplayer action, at least.
