Rumors are swirling around the development of System Shock 3 and Otherside Entertainment. If the rumors are true, the game may be dead in the water for the time being.
To get to the most recent trouble surrounding the game, we need to go back a bit. System Shock 3 was to be created by Otherside Entertainment by Warren Spector and his team. Publication duties would have been handled by Starbreeze. However, early in 2019, Starbreeze experienced huge financial issues requiring it to unload SS3 in order to recoup its investment in the project. Starbreeze sold the game back to Otherside where development continued. According to Spector, Otherside had money enough to keep development rolling for “quite a while” and that talks were underway with a number of publishers. If all else failed, Spector said, Otherside would self-publish the game.
However, over the intervening months, five of the most crucial roles in the game’s development have been abandoned by developers according to VGC.com. The game’s “writer and director, senior designer, lead programmer, QA lead, and its senior environment artist” have all left Otherside. The project’s community manager lamented that there had been layoffs at the studio and confirmed concerns that the remaining staff members had about their job security. Just this week, Chase Jones, the game’s design director, also left Otherside.
An anonymous source reportedly from Otherside took to the airwaves at RPGCodex to say that none of the development team is employed at Otherside and that development is “critically behind” on all fronts. “The only reason I’m posting is that I saw so much confusion about the state of the company and the project I thought some first-person information would be welcome.” the anonymous source wrote. With Starbreeze’s backing, things were going well even with a small team that was invested in “expensive experimentation” for the game. If Starbreeze had stayed in, he believes that the team would have “delivered something interesting with some fresh and innovative gameplay”.
“We were on our way to make something unique and possibly fun,” he wrote. “But probably not what the audience was hungry for.”
We’ll keep you posted as we learn more about the rumors surrounding System Shock 3. In the meantime, head to any of the links above to learn more.
