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Ownership of System Shock 3’s website has been transferred to Tencent

Bullet Club

Banned
Ownership of System Shock 3’s website has been transferred to Tencent

Troubled sequel could have found investment

Ownership of System Shock 3’s website has been transferred to Tencent Holdings, suggesting that the troubled sequel could have found investment.

Both SystemShock3.com and SystemShock4.com had their ownership transferred from developer Otherside Entertainment to the Chinese corporation last week, analysis of the domains by VGC shows.

Prior to this month, the domains were registered to Otherside Entertainment director Paul Neurath.

Tencent is Asia’s second-biggest company by market value ($490bn) and has invested in more than 800 companies including Epic Games, Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft.

System Shock 3’s developer 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 year 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 and studio director Warren Spector hasn’t been active on his social media channels for more than three months.

OtherSide’s official Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages haven’t been updated at all this year.

At the time of publishing, just four people, including Spector, are listed as working at OtherSide’s Texas studio on social network site LinkedIn.

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

Somol is based in OtherSide’s primary studio in Boston, Massachusetts, which worked on 2018’s critically panned Underworld Ascendant, and not the Austin, Texas-based System Shock 3 team.

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

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

Source: VGC
 
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drotahorror

Member
I thought Nightdive Studios was working on this? Or is that the SS1 Remake? I know they typically put out remasters.
 
Was hoping they found a publisher, but damn

giphy.gif
 

JSoup

Banned
How? Youd really rather have absolutely nothing instead of something? It looks promising. What if it turns out to be really good and successful?

Would we have absolutely nothing instead of another half-assed, spyware riddled slapjob?
Yes, we'd rather have nothing.
 

eot

Banned
Call me crazy but I'm more worried about Spector's involvement than I am about some Chinese money. The only games he's designed since Deus Ex are Epic Mickey 1/2, and whenever I hear him talk I get the feeling Deus Ex was some weird fluke (or was made great by the people around him).
 
People as always overreact because it's a chinese company, while i understand the fear of censorship/CCP propaganda etc, it's always been an overreaction (by Americans/Anglo sphere mostly) just as when the Japanese companies were buying and overtaking western companies back in the 70s-80s.

Tencent owns share in Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Bluehole, owns Riot games, has stratigic partnership with Capcom and Square Enix and lent Platinum a large sun of cash to remain independent.

I don't see how this affected the output of these companies OUTSIDE of China?

Ooooh Blizzard banned someone who said some shit about the CCP that these Chinese companies can't stand for, oh the horror i can't enjoy these perfectly fine games because of this.

Muh principles, fuck Huawei for spying on my porn history and knowing i have a foot fetish! But Samsung, Apple can see my fucked up history and here take my 1000$ for your outdated products because they are democratic companies!

(Sent from my Huawei 20 Mate Pro)

/s

Seriously lighten up
 

cragarmi

Member
Seriously the rights to this IP have become really confused over the years. I dont know if even those working at the companies know who owns what at this point. I see a lengthly lawsuit coming...
 

There was confusion in the world of System Shocklast month, after an ambiguous tweetbrought about conflict as to who owned the sci-fi horror IP and who was working on what project. Attempting to bring a little clarity, OtherSide Entertainment has quietly noted that it is still working on System Shock 3, supported by Chinese company Tencent Holdings.

As reported by VGC, OtherSide Entertainment community manager Alyssa Marshall made a still-vague statement this weekend, announcing that OtherSide "are still involved" in the creation of the beleaguered sequel, but that the company "can’t speak on it much further than that at this point in time."
 
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