The Crossing, Arkane Studios and Valve's first-person shooter planned to meld singleplayer and multiplayer with "crossplay," is officially on hold, reports Joystiq.

"We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold," says Arkane Studios CEO and creative director Raphael Colantonio, "Since then, we shifted our efforts to other very good projects." Read more »

Over at 1UP you can find a Q&A on The Crossing, the single/multiplayer FPS from Dark Messiah of Might & Magic developer Arkane Studios. Producer Raphael Colantonio and art director Viktor Antonov talk about what we can expect from the game. Media is included.

FiringSquad reports on the latest Games for Windows magazine featuring a preview of The Crossing, the Source engine powered action game (which we mentioned here late in December) from Dark Messiah of Might & Magic developer Arkane Studios . The game is said to center around the city of Paris, which has fallen into disarray following the collapse of the French government. Thanks to some kind of parallel universe phenomenon the Knights Templar are now running the show. The Crossing also features a mix of singleplayer and multiplayer elements, where AI can be taken over by online players. The game is currently very early in development.

The Arkane Studios website notes that a new episode of the 1UP Show offers a sneak peek on The Crossing, a new project for the Dark Messiah of Might & Magic developer. The 1UP page for the show mentions that more will come in the January 19 episode. According to the teaser image on the Arkane website, The Crossing will "fuse singleplayer with multiplayer".