Despite speculation when the game was recently announced, Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause 3 will not include a multiplayer mode when it launches in 2015, according to an interview with Game Informer. The developer is open to the feature being added in a subsequent update or mod, however.
Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg loves the fan-made multiplayer mod that revitalized Just Cause 2 in 2012, but feels that it is in the studio’s best interests to focus on delivering a rock-solid single player experience first. “Our strength is the sandbox experience, and we want to deliver a great Just Cause 3 experience… Maybe sometime down the line, we’ll take Rico into the modern world of multiplaying.”
Just Cause 3 publisher Square Enix made waves recently with the announcement of Shinra Technologies, a subsidiary whose focus is on building robust, cloud-based multiplayer services. This supposedly enables seamless online worlds that have been heretofore impossible.
Neither company has confirmed collaboration on Just Cause 3 multiplayer, though Shinra senior vice president Jacob Navok told Game Informer that “we’re working on a possible future collaboration with Avalanche Studios.” Also, speaking more generally about the potential of Shinra’s technology, he said: “For example, taking a game that doesn’t have multiplayer right now and easily giving it multiplayer is what we imagine for enhancements.”
Just Cause 3 comes to PlayStation, Xbox, and unspecified PC platforms sometime in 2015.