Even if the reasons for it are good; losing co-op multiplayer from a game can only ever be a bad thing.
Game mod communities can do fantastic things and really extend the life of games. I'm sure everyone knows of what Counter-strike did for half-life, or what DOTA did for Warcraft3...
There is a mod for Bethesdas Oblivion done by a single student which introduces primitive multiplayer into the game and while much is broken like grouped questing, etc, it still shows what can be done with very little ground work available for the community to utilize.
So, multiplayer would be great but Larian needs to spend time fine polishing other areas? Then why not let the community do it and give them as much of a head start as possible via tool kits and sdks and whatever multiplayer code was done? Don't underestimate the work they will put in or how much faster they'll get things done! At the very least don't try and restrict community content!
Many people were let down when multiplayer coop was canceled but with larians support im sure modders will have it done before we finish singleplayer.
