Remember The Crossing, the first-person shooter in development at Arkane Studios in conjunction with Valve that would combine a single-player experience with multiplayer mechanics? We wouldn't be surprised if you didn't, considering there haven't been any updates on the game since 2007 -- and now, the first bit of news we've gotten on the game since then is unfortunately bad news. Joystiq reports that due to financial difficulties, development on The Crossing has been put on hold.

"We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold," said Raphael Colantonio, CEO and creative director of Arkane Studios. "Since then, we shifted our efforts to other very good projects." Those projects include an FPS/RPG hybrid, and a "casual strategy game" for the iPhone.

The original -- and rather ambitious -- idea for The Crossing was what Arkane referred to as the "cross-play" system: you could either play through the pseudo-single player story mode, where enemies could actually be controlled by other players online, or you could play as one of those enemies and try to foil someone else playing through the story mode. Despite the financial difficulty, Arkane evidently got far enough in development to make a "really fun demo (really, really fun)," according to Colantonio. Too bad it looks like we won't be playing it any time soon (if ever).

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