Fortnite Battle Pass Specialist Joins The Last of Us Developer

By Tanner Dedmon

Fortnite's "resident expert" on battle pass systems has joined The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog seemingly to work on the company's new multiplayer experience. Anders Howard, the former senior systems designer at Epic Games, announced this week that he'd joined Naughty Dog as of this month. The job change has led The Last of Us fans to speculate further on what the new multiplayer game from Naughty Dog may be like in terms of monetization, but the developer has yet to announce anything concrete regarding those details.

Howard posted on Twitter about the new job with a picture of the Naughty Dog logo in the background. Over on his LinkedIn page, the resume there confirms the move, too, and lists his title.

What it doesn't say, however, is what he's working on. "New adventures await!" is all that's written there, but given his past works on monetization and battle pass systems for multiplayer games, many have assumed his work at Naughty Dog will be focused on the company's multiplayer project.

Howard's LinkedIn page elaborates further on what he did in terms of battle pass work. After working on Fortnite: Save the World, he "helped form the core of Battle Pass progression strategy" and shipped 12 seasons of battle passes. Other battle pass efforts include consulting on the pass systems for Rocket League and Fall Guys.

This new job announcement feeds back into existing rumors that the multiplayer game from Naughty Dog might be free-to-play. Discussion about that surfaced last month whenever people noticed that Naughty Dog was hiring for a Live Ops Producer position where applicants with experience working on free-to-play games were preferred. Again, it's not guarantee that the game will be free-to-play, but when Naughty Dog has said so little about the project, people naturally have drawn conclusions or assumptions from these sorts of crumbs.

Some concept art was shared months ago for the multiplayer project, but it didn't reveal much other than that the product indeed looked very much like a The Last of Us game. The game's been described as a "full-scale, standalone game" with a "massive scope and immense world."

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