If you're wondering why Naughty Dog was absent from the May 24 PlayStation Showcase despite promising to reveal more about The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off later this year, we've got news for you.

Hint: it's bad.

Naughty Dog went on Twitter to give audiences a status update of its in-development The Last of Us spin-off where it said that it needed more time to perfect the gaming experience. The first-party Sony studio expressed pride in the progress so far, but maintained that extending the development time would serve the game and its audience best.

This isn't the first setback Naughty Dog encountered with the still-untitled multiplayer game. The project started life as the multiplayer mode for The Last of Us Part II before it expanded in scale.

Nevertheless, Naughty Dog assured fans that the team can still realize its ambitions in the future.

Not long after the tweet went rounds all over the internet, Bloomberg reported that the multiplayer project had problems in the middle of development. Specifically, the report states that one of Sony's biggest acquisitions ever, Bungie, who's best known for making a pair of live-service shooters you might know about, had a not-so-good assessment of its status.

Bungie apparently raised concerns that Naughty Dog hadn't done enough to keep players engaged long-term.

If true, the delay while unfortunate, is understandable.

Sony is betting big on new franchises and live-services games with a handful coming out between now and 2026. Naughty Dog's multiplayer spin-off to The Last of Us is likely part of this expansion.

If Sony is as astringent about the quality of its live-service endeavors as it is with its first-party titles, it makes sense to push the game back as long as it needs than risk sullying the brand.

The good news is that Naughty Dog also gave us somewhat of an update about the studio's next project.

There's no word on what Naughty Dog is currently working on, but the award-winning studio referred to it as a "brand-new single-player experience", which effectively means that it's not The Last of Us Part 3.

And, just like that, deflated fans have nothing big to look forward to for this year's The Last of Us Day.

This makes the second delay of a project related to the award-winning multimedia franchise. After the success of The Last of Us on HBO earlier this year, multiple seasons are currently confirmed for the live-action adaptation. Unfortunately, the work on Season 2 is currently at a standstill due to the ongoing WGA strike.