Arkane Studios Suspends The Crossing Development

The Crossing, Arkane Studios' Paris-set first-person shooter, has been put "on hold," says Arkane creative director and CEO Raphael Colantonio. According to a report from Joystiq on the recent change, Colantonio cited a recent funding issue, but offered no further explanation of the suspension. "We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold," he said. "Since then, we shifted our efforts to other very good projects." Arkane's The Crossing, created by the developers of Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, had some level of development assistance from Valve, and used Valve's Source game engine. Set in two parallel versions of modern-day Paris, it was said to blend single-player and multiplayer gameplay in an unusual way. Arkane, which has studios both in Lyon, France and Austin, Texas, has called it "cross-player", but few concrete details about the game had surfaced. Late last year, job cuts at Electronic Arts reportedly led to trouble with an unspecified Arkane game apparently being published by EA. But Colantonio did not give any indication as to whether that had any impact on The Crossing's current situation.