Tencent Appears to Have Invested In System Shock 3

It’s been a while since we heard of System Shock 3, the long-awaited(?) direct sequel to the critically acclaimed System Shock 2. When it last showed up in the news, OtherSide Entertainment, the developer, had apparently let go of some people who had been working on it, which was likely related to the fact that earlier, they admitted that the project was in desperate need of a publisher to provide financial support, ever since their partnership with Starbreeze went belly-up back in 2019.

There’s been no official update from the folks at OtherSide Entertainment on that front, but VGC has just noted SystemShock3.com and SystemShock4.com domains are now the property of giant Chinese investment firm Tencent, otherwise known as the people behind the curtain at Riot Games, Epic, Grinding Gear, Funcom, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and more. Apparently, this purchase was made on April 13.

It’s worth note that neither of these sites are currently being used, and so far OtherSide has been using their own web domain to publish news and updates of the game. But it’s also worth noting that Tencent isn’t the kind of company who would hold a domain hostage, especially from a struggling developer who couldn’t hope to buy the domain off them. So a partnership makes far more sense.

As for why they wouldn’t make a bigger deal of this, who can say? It could be that Tencent is still hammering out the details of the deal with OtherSide, or it could be less of an “investment” as much as it is an “acquisition”, which would require a careful narrative to be constructed. Or this could be a sign that OtherSide has sold the rights to produce System Shock 3 to another, Tencent-owned company and shuttered down for good.

Either way, it means something is happening, at least…