Naughty Dog apologises for sex chat line numbers in The Last of Us

There are many hidden delights in The Last of Us, but one of them won’t be there for much longer.

At one point in the game co-star Joel encounters a notice board with two phone numbers for a ‘pest control’ service. A Kotaku reader thought he’d give them a ring… and found that both were actually sex chat lines.

Developer Naughty Dog has said that their inclusion is a complete mistake and that it intends to have both numbers removed from the game as soon as possible.

"That was an artist’s mistake," creative director Neil Druckmann told Kotaku. "What happened was, they put some phone numbers in the game and then they thought they could just change the area code to 555, then it’s invalid because it’s what they do in movies.

But I guess that doesn’t work when you have a 1-800 in front of it. We’re now working to take it out. It was just an honest mistake."