Nuh, this Jason guy has been very accurate in his reports. I don't like the guy personally as he is one of Kotaku idiots, but he never miss when reporting rumors and news from behind the scene.
As happens with other Bloomber staff, he has been proven wrong several times when reporting bad news for Sony, which resulted to be fake news.
This is not the first time a Sony employee publicly debunks his FUD and lies over Sony in fake news articles.
Also, the game's been under development for 100 million years. There's always a truth to any rumors regarding development troubles.
In 2018 they said TLOU2 was going to have a multiplayer mode, in 2019 they announced that scrapped its MP mode and that it was going to evolve into a separate standalone MP game.
AAA games now take on average 4-6 years, sometimes more (we have to add a half a year/a year delay for developments impacted by covid). In this case it's the biggest and most ambitious ND game, and also their first GaaS title meaning it requires extra work. So being optimistic, we should expect at least 5-7 years for this game, meaning a 2024-2026 or later release. The game could even get a 2027 without experincing any major issue.
On top of that, at every milestone of the project every game and its roadmap gets reviewed, and sometimes they delay it for many reasons that are normal and don't imply any trouble. Creative process simply doesn't work like a factory, as part of the process often appears challenges they can't control or predict that need more time to be addressed.