Bioshock: Infinite is experiencing some development pains, according to Kotaku's inside sources at the developer, Irrational Games.
First announced back in 2010, Infinite's a release that's greatly anticipated by the gaming world. After the disappointment of Bioshock 2, players hope that Infinite will be something of the same tree as the well-received original.
In the past few years of development, the Infinite team has seen quite a few key departures from the creative team. However, according to Irrational founder and creative director Ken Levine, despite the departures, most of the old guard of the creative team from Bioshock 1 still remain:
"As far as the team itself, the lead artist, the art director, the creative director, the lead effects artist, the senior sound guy, the lead programer and the lead AI programmer from BioShock 1 are all on BioShock Infinite. I don't think there's a single senior BioShock team member that isn't here, which I think is amazing and a testament to their commitment to the studio. And there are a ton of amazing people who weren't on BioShock 1 that are on BioShock Infinite."
In the midst of these departures, Irrational Games was also forced to delay the game from an anticipated Fall 2012 release to 2013.
Now, according to Kotaku, the multiplayer modes in development for the game have been cancelledd. Though multiplayer was never a certainty for the final product, it was apparently a large focus for the Irrational Team. The developed hoped that multiplayer would deter players from trading in the game as quickly as had been done with the original.
There were two multiplayer modes that Irrational had planned. One was apparently a cooperative tower defense mode and the other a co-op mode where four players work together to go through single player maps. Unfortunately, neither worked out and both ended up getting scrapped.
Despite the slew of bad news, there's some good coming for Irrational. Rod Fergusson of Gears of War fame has departed Epic Games to help aboard at Irrational with Infinite. For now, we can only hope that Irrational scrapping those multiplayer modes will mean an amazing single player experience—like the original—for Infinite come 2013.