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Were you excited about System Shock 3? Not to be confused with the remake of System Shock in development by Nightdive, this was the follow-up being made by OtherSide Entertainment that now looks less likely to be released.

The situation had been a little uneasy for a while, and it was likely to come to Linux at some point but now we've heard that more and more people have left OtherSide. Something that's not really a good look, is that on OtherSide's own forum there's a thread detailing layoffs since June last year. In the last few months the Design Director, Senior Environment Artist, Senior UI Developer and more have all left. According to a post from an anonymous developer on RPG Codex (given some legitimacy from OtherSide's former Community Manager who linked to it) "the team is no longer employed there." which doesn't sound good.

You can see some footage from System Shock 3 from last year below:

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Always a shame but considering they were already stretched thin with their budget across last year, as mentioned numerous times in weekly updates for Underworld Ascendant (the Linux version eventually released) by their former community manager, it was surprising they had enough to continue on with System Shock 3 at all.

OtherSide have remained quiet on any official word, with their Discord seeing very little official activity and it's the same across their other social networks like Twitter. Their official site doesn't even have anything posted since October last year.

Thankfully, the remake of System Shock from Nightdive is starting to really look good and should be out sometime later this year.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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Nevertheless Feb 10, 2020
The late but very, very premature release of Underworld Ascendant was a big disappointment. It crashed every enthusiasm for the game and bad reviews destroyed sales almost completely. Even the big patchup that followed, which repaired big parts of the mess didn't help. Sales never recovered.
When the publisher they chose for SS3 (Starbreeze) got into financial troubles, Otherside bought back the publishing rights from them and (to my knowledge) never found a new publisher for it.
So I guess you're right, "it was surprising they had enough to continue on with System Shock 3 at all".
TheSHEEEP Feb 10, 2020
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It is never good or fun if people lose their jobs, but I think fans of the series might have dodged a bullet here.

I'd rather have no SS3 at all than one forced out after a very troubled development, half-baked and with all the other negative attributes that usually follow a development story like this.

At least this way, the series can still be considered flawless - nowhere near the nightmare Fallout 3 was for Fallout fans (and that was actually a finished game that didn't go through development hell).

And who knows, maybe one day, someone else will pick it up and do it well.

Quoting: NeverthelessThe late but very, very premature release of Underworld Ascendant was a big disappointment. It crashed every enthusiasm for the game and bad reviews destroyed sales almost completely. Even the big patchup that followed, which repaired big parts of the mess didn't help. Sales never recovered.
When the publisher they chose for SS3 (Starbreeze) got into financial troubles, Otherside bought back the publishing rights from them and (to my knowledge) never found a new publisher for it.
So I guess you're right, "it was surprising they had enough to continue on with System Shock 3 at all".
It should be noted that the SS3 team is NOT the same as the UA team.
Though, yeah, they are under the same development house, so there is no doubt at least management failed across the studios.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 10 February 2020 at 2:30 pm UTC
andy155 Feb 10, 2020
;-((
Shmerl Feb 10, 2020
Sounds bad. As a backer, I never got DRM-free release of Underworld Ascendant. And now with this, it means it will likely never come out.
NeoTheFox Feb 10, 2020
Next thing we know - Epic offers them a bailout and it comes in a year as Epic exclusive :S:
Cybolic Feb 10, 2020
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TheSHEEEPAt least this way, the series can still be considered flawless - nowhere near the nightmare Fallout 3 was for Fallout fans (and that was actually a finished game that didn't go through development hell).

"Nightmare"? Perhaps, for edgy sheep. For the vast majority of proper gamers Fallout 3 was a masterpiece and GOTY of 2008. Btw, i used to play the original Fallouts as a teenager day 1 back when none of you even knew what they were. They only sold around 130k copies, after all.... So don't try to sell me the "you are just young and never played the classics" crap.

Let's keep things civil, shall we? Of course many people loved Fallout 3, including many players of the previous Fallout games, but it's no secret that a large part of the fans of the first two games, to this day, consider Fallout >3 to pale in comparison. There's really no need to talk about "edgy sheep", "proper gamers" and ageism that wasn't even in The SHEEEP's post when we're talking about a known divide in a fan group. Let's just respect each other's opinions without name calling and elitism, please.
Kimyrielle Feb 10, 2020
After Underworld, which IIRC released for Linux a stunning year after the Windows version and wasn't a good game anyway, I am not sure if I would have bought another game from them. No big loss for me personally.
wvstolzing Feb 10, 2020
I wish Warren Spector would join Arkane to co-direct an immersive sim with Harvey Smith.

Or just give the SS license to Arkane, to let them make SS3. (I mean they already did that, sort of, with Prey).
Luke_Nukem Feb 10, 2020
I hope they come out on the other side okay.
TheRiddick Feb 11, 2020
I don't think Underworld Ascendant sold as well as they'd hoped, in saying that I did buy it but haven't played much, seems to work ok but feels rather small world corridor like so far.

REAL shame about SS3, the trailer looks pretty decent but if you haven't enough funding then I guess its time to shut up shop and move on in life. Don't do a Duke Nukem Forever!


Last edited by TheRiddick on 11 February 2020 at 1:56 am UTC
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