Naughty Dog has apologized for failing to credit an artist’s work in a recently released trailer for The Last of Us Part II.
In a tweet on Tuesday, June 9, Naughty Dog vice president Neil Druckmann formally apologized to artist Lotte Kestner for failing to credit her as inspiration for a rendition of the song True Faith that lead character Ellie sang in a The Last of Us Part II trailer. Druckmann called it an “oversight” and said it would be fixed.
“We hope that Lotte Kestner receives the recognition she deserves,” Druckmann said.
Later on Tuesday, Sony and Naughty Dog published an update to the trailer, which depicts Ellie singing the song in the background while gameplay footage is shown. The update properly credits Kestner and includes a link to her music portfolio.
The song True Faith was originally recorded by the band New Order, but Kestner covered the track more than a decade ago. The version Ellie sings in the trailer closely matches how Kestner sang it, prompting the outcry.
After the trailer was released on June 3, Kestner quickly caught wind of its release and posted a scathing tweet that was since deleted.
“Hey, are you aware that the True Faith cover you put in your Last of Us 2 trailer is a replica of my cover that came out 10 years ago?” she said. “I wrote original parts not in the original song that are copied exactly by whoever covered it. I am heartbroken.”
Several of Kestner’s fans joined her in criticizing Naughty Dog, but the developer remained silent on the controversy until Tuesday.
In a tweet posted Tuesday, Kestner thanked Druckmann, Sony, and Naughty Dog for acknowledging their mistake and making it right. She added that she was “so proud this music has found a home in such an amazing project.”
The Last of Us Part II comes out June 19 for the PlayStation 4. The game takes place five years after the conclusion of the first title in the series. This time around, Ellie and Joel are living with other survivors when Ellie embarks on what Naughty Dog calls “a relentless journey to carry out justice” in what has become an increasingly dangerous post-apocalyptic world.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.