System Shock Remastered on "Hiatus" After Raising Over $1.3 Million

Despite raising over 1.3 million dollars and acquiring over 21,000 backers, the team over at Nightdive Studios has some disappointing news for fans early awaiting the System Shock remaster.

Though the crowdfunding campaign was a complete success, the studio's CEO Stephen Kick admitted that the team was overly ambitious about the project and that they have strayed away from the original game. Kick mentioned that it felt more like they were creating a new game versus remastering an old favourite, which is something they didn't intend on doing, nor did they want to.

In his message to fans titled "Sometimes you need to take a step back in order to take two steps forward," this is what he had to say about the temporary hiatus:

"In March of 2016, Nightdive Studios released our video of our vision of System Shock Remastered. Done in Unity it was an immediate hit with almost a half million views on YouTube. In June of 2016 we launched a Kickstarter campaign to make the vision into a reality. It was tremendously successful with over 21,000 backers contributing over $1.3 million to the campaign. We put together a development team and began working on the game. But along the way something happened.

Maybe we were too successful. Maybe we lost our focus. The vision began to change. We moved from a Remaster to a completely new game. We shifted engines from Unity to Unreal, a choice that we don't regret and one that has worked out for us. With the switch we began envisioning doing more, but straying from the core concepts of the original title.

As our concept grew and as our team changed, so did the scope of what we were doing and with that the budget for the game. As the budget grew, we began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners. 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.

Ultimately the responsibility for the decisions rests with me. As the CEO and founder of Nightdive Studios, a company that was built on the restoration of the System Shock franchise, I let things get out of control. I can tell you that I did it for all the right reasons, that I was totally committed to making a great game, but it has become clear to me that we took the wrong path, that we turned our backs on the very people who made this possible, our Kickstarter backers.

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. Please accept my personal assurance that we will be back and stronger than ever. System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled."

Sometimes it's important to make those tough calls. Though it's a shame to see such an anticipated project pushed back, it's good that they are aware that it was turning into something it was never mean to be. Hopefully the team can get their vision back on track and we'll learn more soon enough. Stay tuned!