Arkane Studios and Valve’s ambitious singleplayer and multiplayer hybrid ‘The Crossing’ has been put on a long term hiatus.
A ”financial challenge” that occurred some months ago has thrown a wrench in the machine explains Arkane CEO Raphael Colantonio. EA reductions had hit the studio back in November.
The Crossing was meant to replace the AI of NPCs with actual online players, much in the way Versus mode functions for Valve’s Left 4 Dead.
”We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold,” Colantonio told Joystiq. ”Since then, we shifted our efforts to other very good projects.”
These two other projects are an FPS RPG and a casual strategy game for the iPhone. While it’s not been confirmed as the cause it does look likely that EA’s cost cutting measures may be the unexpected money troubles that hit the studio when they pulled support last year.
”I can’t comment too much about The Crossing other than saying that we have a really fun demo (really, really fun),” he added.
Source: Joystiq
