How much retardedness this industry and the world generally can take? Who thought that it would be good idea to chase gaas bullshit for the studio that is among if not the best in making story-driven single player games, while seeing that 90% of these gaas shits are flops? I can’t even anymore…
It was no one's "idea".
Some Naughty Dog developers wanted to deliver on their unfulfilled promises of a multiplayer mode for The Last Of Us Part II via a more ambitious, standalone title; and SIE producers in North America said "why not?", as such product was aligned with the company's desire to put together a slate of live-service projects for PS5.
The whole situation emerged naturally from both the creative and business desires of all parties involved...
... but none of them saw it coming how the project would end up growing so dramatically in scale - to the point that Naughty Dog described it as their biggest game ever - and, since Sony had little experience with live-services, no one was able to asses the impact that the studio's growing ambitious would end up having in their ability to even release and then support The Last Of Us Online long-term. And by the time Bungie was brought into the fold and were able to review the project, the game was exiting pre-production and gearing towards full production, so there wasn't the chance to course-correct and adjust the scope of this... gigantic endeavor.
And while you're right in pointing out that the majority of live-service games don't end up sticking to the wall, in this case, and from what we've heard about it, The Last Of Us Online was shaping up to be a tremendous title and, knowing Naughty Dog's pedigree, it may have turned out to be the highest quality multiplayer game to ever come out... but would that have been worth knowing that it had to come at the expense of all other singleplayer titles in development at Naughty Dog? That's the question Sony and the studio ultimately asked themselves, and their answer was no.