CD Projekt RED has said that development of The Witcher: Rise Of The White Wolf was put on hold because it wasn’t living up to the publisher’s quality expectations, leading the company to fear it would miss its intended launch date.

“After recent technical evaluation of The Witcher: Rise of The White Wolf, CD Projekt RED has decided to suspend development of the project,” the company said on the game’s website.

“This decision was made because the company saw a high risk that the final product will not meet the quality expectations of CD Projekt RED. We have already started to look for other possible solutions to address this situation.”

CD Projekt RED CEO Adam Kiciński said that the decision was one of the “hardest” the company had ever had to make, especially seeing as the game was at a “very advanced” stage.

“However, there was serious danger that we would miss our target release date,” he said. “Unfortunately, this project was not going in the right direction. We are now looking into all possible scenarios, and we will do all we can to retain our fans’ confidence in us. We simply will not let them down; the quality of our games remains the highest priority.”

Rumours that development of the PS3 and Xbox 360 game had stalled first broke in late April.

Shortly afterwards developer WideScreen Games confirmed the news, citing IP owner CD Projekt’s alleged failure to meet financial obligations as the cause. CD Projekt denied the claims, instead insisting that production delays were behind the move to put the brakes on the RPG’s development.