Developer OtherSide Entertainment has made 17 members of staff redundant after an in-development project fell through.
The company confirmed the news to Game Developer, saying that it had made the decision to let these staff go after opting to cancel the in-development project Argos. OtherSide argued that under normal circumstances, the game “could have been a huge success” but that the current industry environment was “brutally challenging. As a result, the studio assessed Argos as “unviable for now”.
“After the cancellation of a game under development codenamed Argos, OtherSide Entertainment had to sadly say goodbye to 17 team members, effective end of May,” the company wrote.
The statement continued: “To any studios out there hiring, we cannot recommend these impacted people highly enough.”
This news comes shortly after the release of Thick as Thieves, a stealth heist multiplayer game that was published by Aonic Group’s Megabit.
OtherSide Entertainment was founded in 2014 by veteran developer Paul Neurath. The company had acquired the Underworld IP.
Warren Spector joined the developer two years later as studio director.
Since the release of Underworld Ascendant, OtherSide Entertainment has had little in the way of luck. The company was working on System Shock 3, which was set to be published by Starbreeze, though that firm’s financial woes impacted funding for the eagerly-awaited sci-fi RPG.
In 2020, Tencent acquired the rights to System Shock and OtherSide made layoffs. Two years later, Spector announced that Otherside was no longer involved in System Shock 3’s development anymore.
At the start of 2023, reports emerged that OtherSide had been working on a Dungeons and Dragons game with Hasbro, but this had been cancelled.
In 2023, Aonic Group acquired OtherSide.
