OtherSide says Tencent is ‘taking the System Shock franchise forward’

OtherSide Entertainment has said that Tencent will be “taking the System Shock franchise forward”.

The studio’s vague announcement, made on Twitter, follows VGC’s recent discovery that ownership of System Shock 3’s website had been transferred to Tencent.

Both SystemShock3.com and SystemShock4.com had their ownership transferred from OtherSide to the Chinese corporation last week.

“We are happy to announce that Tencent will be taking the System Shock franchise forward,” OtherSide said on Wednesday.

“As a smaller indie studio, it had been challenging for us to carry the project on our own. We believe Tencent’s deep capabilities and expertise as a leading game company will bring the franchise to new heights.”

Tencent is Asia’s second-biggest company by market value and has invested in more than 800 companies including Epic Games, Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft.

OtherSide had been searching for new investment for much of 2019, following its separation from former partner Starbreeze in February of the same year.

Creative director Warren Spector told VGC in May 2019 that talks were progressing with “a lot” of interested publishers and that OtherSide had enough capital to fund itself for “quite a while.”

However, the Otherside Austin studio appeared to be in trouble this February when an anonymous developer claimed its development team was “no longer employed” and LinkedIn confirmed an exodus of senior leads.

Since that report OtherSide has failed to respond to requests for comment.

Last month the firm’s marketing head Walter Somol broke the silence, insisting “we’re still here,” but shortly after he confirmed his own departure from the company.

System Shock 3 was most recently shown at GDC in March 2019, when Spector said it was being made with the Unity engine.

The game was being developed under license from Vancouver-based Nightdive Studios, which owns the rights to the System Shock franchise and IP.