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The System Shock Franchise is Now Being Handled By Tencent

It looks like System Shock 3 will be moving forward, but under a very different banner. After reports that began swirling around earlier in the week, developer OtherSide Entertainment confirmed that Chinese corporation Tencent will now be "taking the System Shock franchise forward" in the future.

This marks the latest development in the System Shock 3 saga, which has been churning for five years now since its initial announcement in December 2015. In 2018, publisher Starbreeze found financial issues creeping up, and OtherSide had to part ways with the developer in February 2019. From there, it seemed things might be smooth sailing, but there were still problems brewing.

For better or worse, System Shock 3 is now being run by Tencent.
For better or worse, System Shock 3 is now being run by Tencent.

OtherSide attested that the game was about halfway completed, and released a bit of pre-alpha footage that September. However, as it turned out, additional rumors began swirling that the entire System Shock 3 team was actually no longer at the company. Two months later, supposedly the team at OtherSide was confirmed as being "still there". That was from marketing and business development VP Walter Somol.

Now, VGC noticed that the official System Shock 3 website had been transferred to Tencent. Not long after that, the tweets from OtherSide started showing up.

"We are happy to announce that Tencent will be taking the #SystemShock franchise forward," the tweets began. "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."

It's not entirely clear from here whether the game is simply being taken over in all respects by  Tencent, or what will happen. One thing's for sure, though – its future is still very much uncertain and we will likely get a very different product than what was in the works over these past five years.


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Brittany VincentAbout Brittany Vincent

Brittany Vincent has been covering video games and tech for over a decade for publications like G4, Popular Science, Playboy, Empire, Complex, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, GameSpot, Variety, Rolling Stone, Yahoo, and more. She's also appeared as a speaker at video game conventions like PAX East and has coordinated social media for companies like CNET.
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