The developer behind The Last Hope made no attempt to conceal the game it took, uh, inspiration from when it was released on Nintendo Switch. Because that's the point, it seems. It's almost definitely there to dupe someone who thought they were getting the non-existent Switch port of The Last of Us. One of the characters even looks exactly like Ellie and everything.
Finally, weeks after The Last Hope first attracted attention online, its (not entirely successful) deception is at an end. Sony has issued a copyright claim, removing the copycat game from the Nintendo eShop. Sony has even managed to get trailers for the game removed from YouTube, clearly wanting to remove all traces of The Last Hope's notorious existence.
This latest development was first reported by Eurogamer, who noticed that The Last Hope is nowhere to be found on the eShop anymore. It was also found that trailers on YouTube have been removed. True enough, going back to our first article on the topic, the trailer we embedded cannot be watched. Instead, it has a notice reading: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC."
Clearly, someone on Sony's legal team caught wind of the whole thing and didn't find it as funny as the rest of us. Of course, there isn't a chance in hell that Sony viewed The Last Hope as an actual contender to The Last of Us. It may have been more concerned about the brand damage the game could do in the minds of customers who actually think this is an official The Last of Us game. Sony's support team almost definitely doesn't want to be dealing with those complaints.
However, despite this recent setback, the company that brought us The Last Hope is still going strong. VG Games has many other hits to its name, like Wizards Legacy, Need for Drive, Mad Road, and Max Reckoning. No, I made none of those up. Please, just scroll from VG Games' Twitter page, I'm begging you.
Alas, fans of The Last Hope will have to find their fun elsewhere. Maybe in The Last of Us, if they have a console to play it on. Otherwise, you can always kill some time scrolling through all the rip-off games on the eShop, it's surprisingly fun in its own way.