Valve and Arkane's The Crossing 'on hold'

post from Joystiq on 15 May 2009 10:45:00 AM. © Joystiq

click for gallery of The Crossing

Bad news for those of you anticipating Arkane Studios' and Valve's "crossplay" FPS The Crossing (and for those of you with good memories). After the two-year anniversary of the game's debut passed earlier this year, we renewed our attempts to get some information on the innovative shooter. In case you don't remember, The Crossing promised to merge single-player and multiplayer gaming (hence the "crossplay" moniker). Two years ago, the premise seemed impossibly ambitious; now, after the success of Valve's Left 4 Dead (and, specifically, its Versus mode) we're a lot more confident the approach could work.

So, what happened to the project? "We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold," Raphael Colantonio, CEO and creative director of Arkane Studios, told us. "Since then, we shifted our efforts to other very good projects." Two of those projects are reportedly underway at Arkane's Austin studio, an FPS RPG and a "casual strategy game" for the iPhone, under the direction of Deus Ex-alum Harvey Smith.