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Highlights
- Aonic has formed a new publishing arm called Megabit that will support Warren Spector’s OtherSide Entertainment and other studios.
- OtherSide’s System Shock 3 faced development troubles, but the company has moved on to other projects.
- Megabit will support various first-party development studios and plans to expand into publishing third-party games.
Swedish video game tech group Aonic has created a new publishing arm called Megabit, which will, among other things, support Warren Spector’s studio OtherSide Entertainment. For many, Spector is considered a legend in the video game space whose work is not only iconic in itself but has also inspired franchises that went on to become classics in their own right. Among these projects are several entries in the Ultima series, System Shock, Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief: Deadly Shadows.
In 2016, Spector joined Otherside Entertainment, which employs several alumni of Looking Glass Studios. For years, one of the ongoing projects of OtherSide was System Shock 3, whose development seems to have been troubled from the start. Financial problems at intended publisher Starbreeze Studios was one of the hiccups, as well as the departure of several System Shock 3 dev team members in 2020, many of whom were senior staff.
Tencent Acquires System Shock Developer
OtherSide Entertainment announces that Tencent has taken over the System Shock franchise, with fans wondering what that means for System Shock 3.
In March 2022, it came out that OtherSide and Spector would no longer be involved with System Shock 3. Nevertheless, the studio has other projects in the works, and in 2023, Aonic acquired OtherSide. The growing video game conglomerate has now formed Megabit, a publishing arm that will provide support to the first-party development studios under Aonic’s umbrella.
These developers include Spector’s Otherside Entertainment, Milkytea, Tiny Roar, and BKOM, and the company also plans to expand into publishing third-party games from “high-quality, mid-sized” studios. CEO Paul Schempp stated that Aonic’s “approach to publishing offers our partners the skills and tools they need, without infringing on their creativity.”
Megabit Has a Team of Industry Vets
Megabit has been built from the ground up and is comprised of a number of industry veterans whose portfolios include the Tomb Raider, RuneScape, Payday, and FIFA franchises. The new publishing arm already has four games queued up to launch in the next year and a half and hopes to have released a total of 10 games by the end of 2026.
At Aonic, we are dedicated to helping our studios grow in every way possible… Our approach to publishing offers our partners the skills and tools they need, without infringing on their creativity.
Among these upcoming titles is another project from OtherSide called Thick as Thieves, a co-op game with a supernatural twist set in an alternate history Edinburgh. Other than a brief blurb on the OtherSide website and promo art, not much is known yet about the game. Lou’s Lagoon, developed by Tiny Roar, is a cozy open-world adventure game that puts players in the role of Lou, who inherits a seaplane delivery service. To maintain the business, Lou flies around and makes deliveries, of course, but also discovers new islands, helps out the local community, fights off pirates, and maybe solves a mystery or two. According to the Megabit website, the company has plans to reveal another game sometime in Q2 2024.
