A crowdfunded remake of the 1994 PC classic System Shock is being put on hiatus according to developer Nightdive Studios.
The project had amassed $1.35 million through a successful Kickstarter campaign and was set for release in late 2017. In a statement to his backers, Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick wrote
“The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great….I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project.”
Nightdive had been vocal about the development of System Shock ever since the Kickstarter wrapped in the summer of 2016. Director of business development Larry Kuperman spoke to Polygon about the struggle to find a publishing partner in order to secure more funding as the development goals became more ambitious. The game switched from being a simple remake on the Unity engine, into a re-imagining of the game on the Unreal Engine.
The hiatus will involve letting go of 15 contract workers but all full time staff will continue working on the game. In the interview, Kuperman suspected the game would finally come out in around 18-24 months.
Kickstarter is always a fickle method of funding games. While there are great stories out there, like Pillars of Eternity, the amount of funded projects that end up abandoned for one reason or another outnumber the successful ones. Nightdive has been adamant that this project will continue and we hope to be able to get our hands on it soon.
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