Sadly, it seems so. No news since Tencent purchased the rights last May. I thought I might have missed something.
I just assumed Tencent was either going to continue the project or start a new one, because of the way they swooped in so quickly to buy the rights from Otherside. But they might have jumped at the opportunity to buy the rights at a fire sale price, with no plans to do anything with it right away. Kind of an investment.
I guess I'm not clear what rights they bought or how it has any value to them if they don't develop a System Shock 3. Stephen Kick made it clear after the Tencent announcement that the System Shock IP and franchise is still owned by Nightdive. Did Tencent really "buy" the rights to publish just "System Shock 3" and then cancel development so they have nothing to publish? Huh?
They bought the rights to publish System Shock 3, or perhaps more generally the rights to publish a new System Shock game. I didn't read anything about them buying any of Otherside's IP. They didn't cancel development, Otherside had already done that.
I guess I expected one of two things would happen:
(a) Having secured a publisher and (presumably) new funding, Otherside would hire the team back and restart development
(b) Tencent would start a new project with another studio
The third possibility, which I didn't really consider at the time, was that Tencent would buy the rights and put them on the shelf for another time. Perhaps they have a studio in mind and are waiting for another project to finish before the team they want can work on SS3.
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