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Tencent takes control of System Shock franchise

Tencent takes control of System Shock franchise

Developer Otherside Entertainment has confirmed that Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent now owns the System Shock IP.

Taking to Twitter, the studio revealed that it had run into problems working on System Shock 3 on its own. Otherside said that it has faith that Tencent will be able to do right by the beloved sci-fi RPG series.

"As a smaller Indie studio, it had been challenging for us to carry the project on our own," the studio said.

"We believe Tencent's deep capabilities and expertise as a leading game company will bring the franchise to new heights."

This follows reports earlier in the year that Otherside had laid off the Austin, Texas team that was working on System Shock 3, before news broke this week that Tencent now owned the domain names for both SystemShock3.com and SystemShock4.com.

Troubled Swedish games firm Starbreeze was set to publish System Shock 3, but sold the publishing rights back to Otherside after running into financial difficulties of its own. At the time, studio director Warren Spector said that there was "plenty of interest" from companies looking to publish the game.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.