Sony Considered Licensing The Last of Us to China, According to New Lawsuit

A new court document has revealed that Sony PlayStation had a meeting with Tencent about a potential The Last of Us mobile game. However, the Naughty Dog TLOU collaboration fell through after the Chinese studio showed interest in another PS5 franchise.

PlayStation Considered The Last of Us Mobile Game with Tencent

Over the past few months, Sony has been engaged in a lawsuit against Tencent over copyright infringement. According to the PlayStation publisher, the Chinese studio’s recently announced Light of Motiram game is a “ripoff” of Horizon. A new court filing in October has revealed that Sony had initially met with Tencent’s Aurora Studios to discuss a potential collaboration with The Last of Us instead.

According to reports, PlayStation Head of Mobile Olivier Courtemanche had actually flown to China to meet with Tencent. In the court document, it was revealed that the Sony executive went to meet with Aurora Studios about a potential TLOU collaboration.

However, Courtemanche was taken by surprise when the Tencent studio pitched him a project based on Horizon Zero Dawn instead. “With respect to Aurora Studios, we went into the meeting under the impression that they wanted to do a potential collaboration for The Last of Us.” 

Sony Was Open to Third-Party The Last of Us Projects

The meeting, of course, eventually fell through as Sony was not interested in licensing out the Horizon IP. Interestingly, the court filings don’t specifically mention a mobile game. It instead specifically words it as “collaboration.” The meeting for TLOU project was also before PlayStation was aware of Light of Motiram. 

Still, this at least shows that Sony PlayStation was interested in licensing out Naughty Dog’s IP to a third-party studio. Some players have speculated that it might have been related to The Last of Us multiplayer game. However, that project was eventually canceled. Either way, it’s intriguing to think about nonetheless.

Some Players Have TLou Fatigue

Interestingly, some players reacted to the recent news about a Tencent collaboration with negativity. PS5 users specifically were critical of Sony for continuing to pursue more TLOU games. According to many comments on Reddit, users now have fatigue following the release of multiple remasters and the divisive TLOU Part 2 in 2020.

However, some were also not happy with the PlayStation publisher meeting with Tencent. “Dude, enough with The Last of Us,” a Reddit account wrote in reaction. Another comment posted, “I’m all for Sony licensing their IPs out, but if it’s for live service mobile slop I’m good off that.” One comment simply exclaimed, “What’s it gonna be this time, another remake?”

It’s also worth mentioning that it appears that it was Tencent who initially approached Sony PlayStation for a collaboration. However, it’s unclear which company brought up The Last of Us first. Based on these recent court documents, SIE had a meeting with the China-based publisher, with the belief that they were going to discuss the Naughty Dog IP.

So it at least hints that Sony was open to potentially licensing TLOU out.