System Shock 3 development staff reportedly "no longer with the studio"
Highly-anticipated sequel supposedly halted after studio falls "critically behind" in development
Development of System Shock 3 has reportedly crawled to a halt, and many of the staff have been laid off.
As reported by VGC, the future of System Shock 3 is uncertain as many senior staff have also left the company in recent months.
While OtherSide Entertainment has remained silent on this issue, some former staff have shared their experiences online.
One anonymous poster on RPG Codex said that "everyone on the content side is no longer with the studio," and went on to claim that the team was "critically behind" with development.
The anonymous poster suggested that the near-total collapse of System Shock 3 publisher Starbreeze Studios was partly to blame for current situation; in December 2018, Starbreeze was facing insolvency and sold the publishing rights back to OtherSide a few months later.
"If Starbreeze hadn't gone into crisis I think we would've delivered something interesting with some fresh and innovative gameplay, but a much smaller game than what people were expecting and inevitably disappointing for a sequel to such a beloved franchise," they continued.
Former community manager Sam Luangkhot confirmed the veracity of the post over at the OtherSide Entertainment forums, and said there had been other layoffs previously at the studio.
"I want to say, having been at [Otherside] while layoffs were happening and having left just before this next round in Austin, I deeply admired every single developer I had the chance to work with," they wrote.
"Having played the internal [System Shock 3] demo, I know the Austin team worked their asses off and made some stunning progress in the past couple of months.
"It hurts to see many of these developers out of a job on a project they worked so hard on. Some of the developers... still haven't found full-time work since June."
OtherSide Entertainment did not respond to GamesIndustry.biz request for comment in time for publication, and the company's official Twitter account ceased posting regular updates in October 2019.