
System Shock Remastered placed on standby, while devs focus on sequel.
Stephen Kick, the founder, and CEO of Nightdive Studios, the company which bought the rights of the System Shock series, recently announced that the team is taking a raincheck and that the remastered version of the game will not be coming out anytime soon.
System Shock Remastered Delayed or Cancelled?
As far as gaming history is concerned, few know that System Shock spearheaded the innovative move that will give birth to open-world first-person perspective games. Being considered the spiritual parent of the Bioshock series and the recently-released Prey Remastered, System Shock is without a doubt, one of those games that stays with you, no matter when you’ve finished it.
Back in 2013, Looking Glass Studios, the creator, and distributor of System Shock decided to leave the gaming scene, selling all the intellectual rights of the franchise to the insurers.
Several months later, Kick, who learned about the company’s downfall, would track down all the parties who owned the rights to the franchise and spend a ludicrous amount of money in order to buy them.
Three years later, Kick announced that his game studio, Nightdive, will be working on the remastered version of the game. This version would have been built on the Unity engine and compatible with high-end PCs.
As for financial aid, Kick and his studio started a Kickstarter campaign. Within a couple of months, Nightdive Studios’ bank account contained the very round figure of $1.3 million, funds which should have been used to hire devs and put the final touches on the game.
Unfortunately, after two years of tinkering, Kick announced that his company has put the project on hold for the time being and continue to work on System Shock’s sequel. Moreover, the company’s CEO declared that this doesn’t mean that the project has been abandoned, merely that the team is taking a breather and reflect on where they want to go with this game.
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