One of the best parts about the Halo franchise has always been the co-op. I still remember playing through the Master Chief Collection with my friends over the span of a weekend: It’s still one of my favorite gaming experiences ever, and because of it I can’t help but get excited whenever a new Halo campaign rears its’ head. Sadly, a development update from Halo Infinite’s team has confirmed that Infinite won’t have co-op or forge mode upon release. During the update, Halo Infinite creative head Joseph Staten reported the bad news, confirming that although both modes were on the way, neither would be ready for a holiday launch.

Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shut down, and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch. And we also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well.

Forge mode will also be missing at launch, which is a serious blow to fans of the series. Forge has been a staple in Halo games ever since Halo: Reach, and offers players a slew of map-building tools and special rules so that gamers can build not just their own shooting grounds, but their own game modes. Some of this player-created content has even been used as official in-game modes!

Halo: Infinite will be ditching both of these at launch, though, in favor of getting the game out for the 2021 holiday window and releasing these modes as part of Infinite’s seasonal release schedule. Staten clarified that both co-op and forge were coming, but we might have some time to wait before either is ready. He stated that season two of the game’s multiplayer would release alongside a co-op feature for the campaign and forge mode would come out with season three. Staten also explained that each of the game’s multiplayer seasons would release every three months, so it sounds like neither feature will be usable until early to mid-2022.

This news comes after learning that Halo: Infinite’s multiplayer mode will be free-to-play, which means that 343 expects gamers to pay $60 on release for the Halo: Infinite campaign alone with no co-op and no forge mode until next year. Hopefully, this means that the campaign is going to be one of the best in the franchise, but that campaign will not have co-op to fall back on. You can watch the full development update below.