Video Games

The Last of Us Episode 1 is free on YouTube and HBO in some countries

Show also reported to boost game sales

Marco Wutz

The Last of Us Episode 1 is free on YouTube and HBO in some countries
The Last of Us Episode 1 is free on YouTube and HBO in some countries /

Naughty Dog’s cooperation with HBO could not be more successful: The Last of Us has won acclaim with critics as well as viewers in its first few episodes and seeks to build up even more momentum. HBO and its distribution partner Sky have now put the show’s first episode up on YouTube for free to get more people hooked, but this offer only goes for a few select countries.

Those in the UK can catch the episode on the SkyTV channel, those in Italy on SkyItalia. Anyone in the US can watch it for free on HBO Max.

This is a strategy HBO successfully used before with award-winning series such as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.

The show has also had a noticeable impact on the sale of The Last of Us video games, as noted by industry analyst Christopher Dring, who cites digital sales numbers from the UK. The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Remastered tripled their sales compared to the previous week, according to him.

This certainly bodes well for a potential The Last of Us Part 3, the making of which depends on if Naughty Dog can come up with an impactful story idea, says the studio’s co-president Neil Druckmann. If a third game in the series is made, it may take inspiration from Elden Rings’s way of storytelling.

You can also read our The Last of Us HBO preview to find out more about how it stands up to its source material.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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