The games industry can be ruthless. Even when you have massive hits under your belt, there are no guarantees. Bruce Straley, a longtime Naughty Dog developer who co-directed several of the studio's biggest releases, found that out the hard way when his new studio apparently lost funding midway through a project.
The timeline was recounted by Quentin Cobb, a designer who worked at Naughty Dog on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4, in an interview with Kiwi Talkz. "He was funded by Microsoft," Cobb recalls. "On July 2 [2025], the same day I got laid off, his funding got pulled for his game."
