4A Games has announced that Metro: Last Light‘s multiplayer mode has been dropped so that the developer can focus their efforts and resources on the game’s single-player campaign.
4A Games made the announcement on their official blog, saying:
“Throughout the development of Metro: Last light a small, dedicated team had been working on a number of multiplayer prototypes. After E3, we decided to fold this multiplayer team back into the main group and focus 100% of the studio’s resources on the single player campaign. As a result, Metro: Last Light will not ship with a multiplayer component.”
“Your response to our E3 demo made it very clear that although there was a lot of interest and intrigue around Metro’s multiplayer, the single player campaign is what the fanbase cares about the most…”
The developer added that they “don’t like throwing away work”, so there is the possibility that the multiplayer component will be added as DLC after Metro: Last Light ships.
With the majority of the video game industry shoehorning multiplayer into every single game in their stable, it is nice to see THQ and 4A Games make the decision to concentrate on making sure that Last Light‘s single-player campaign is completed first.
With that said, I find it a bit troubling that 4A Games is having to cut features from Metro: Last Light. This is a game that has already been delayed, had plans for a Wii U version canceled, and now has had its scope reduced. Obvisouly that doesn’t mean that the game has any major problems, but it is also hard to view that history in a very positive light.