Thick as Thieves Studio OtherSide Entertainment Hit by New Round of Layoffs
OtherSide Entertainment has laid off 18 more employees from its Thick as Thieves team, the second brutal round of cuts to hit the Boston studio in barely a month. The studio’s headcount has dropped by 36 in just about a month, and a company spokesperson has confirmed that “fewer than 10” people remain employed at OtherSide, working on updates for Thick as Thieves, and that there are “currently no plans for the studio to work on any future games.”
Second Round of Cuts Follows Argos Cancellation
The new layoffs, first reported by Game Developer, come on top of a separate cut of 17 workers made at the end of May. The company parted ways with 18 employees working on its co-op immersive sim Thick as Thieves, following the 17 layoffs reported earlier in June after the cancelation of a game codenamed Argos. That unannounced project, an ambitious multiplayer immersive sim, was scrapped after years in development, with the studio citing worsening market conditions.
OtherSide’s leadership was blunt about why the studio can no longer sustain its previous size. In a statement given to Game Developer, a spokesperson said: “This, unfortunately, has been an increasingly challenging space to occupy in recent years. Despite the encouraging response to the launch of Thick as Thieves’ introductory campaign, it has become clear that the continuation of the studio in its current shape is no longer a commercially viable path.”
The spokesperson added a note of regret for the departing staff, saying “We are deeply grateful to the team for their superb work and regret this outcome, having pursued every alternative to find a preferable solution.”
Thick as Thieves’ Scope Was Already Slashed Before Launch
Thick as Thieves didn’t arrive as originally pitched. GamingBolt reports that the title was originally going to be a PvPvE game that would feature immersive sim elements, before the studio made the decision to turn it into a smaller-scale co-op game instead, featuring only two maps and priced at $5. That pivot was announced only weeks before the game’s May 20 launch.
PC Gamer’s review noted the finished product landed as a compact experience rather than the bigger multiplayer vision originally teased, observing that Thick as Thieves was also relatively tiny, offering an estimated four hours of gameplay out of the box, so Otherside priced it at just $5/£5/€5, which it hoped would be low enough to attract a sizable audience of players and “give the team the flexibility to develop additional content informed by how players engage with the game.” GamingBolt awarded the game a 7 out of 10 in its own review, praising the level design but flagging thin content.
Despite the low entry price, player numbers on Steam have not been strong enough to fund further work, with PC Gamer noting that judging by the player counts on Steam, though, that’s not really happening, referring to the studio’s hope of growing the audience post-launch.
A Studio Built on Immersive Sim Pedigree, Now Down to a Skeleton Crew
OtherSide Entertainment carries serious genre credentials. The studio was co-founded by Looking Glass Studios veteran Paul Neurath, and Warren Spector — the designer behind Deus Ex and System Shock — later joined as studio director, giving the team a direct lineage back to the roots of the immersive sim genre.
That pedigree hasn’t shielded OtherSide from repeated setbacks. The company received a substantial investment from Swedish game conglomerate Aonic in 2023, a partnership that came together shortly after Wizards of the Coast canceled a Dungeons & Dragons game in development at the studio. Years earlier, the studio also lost its role as lead developer on System Shock 3 after rights changes at Starbreeze.
With the Argos cancellation and now this second layoff round, PC Gamer’s report notes that there’s no official indication at this point that OtherSide will close, but with the cancellation of the project codenamed Argos in June and this latest round of cuts leaving such a small number of employees at the studio, it’s hard to imagine where else it might go from here. Game Developer’s follow-up reporting confirmed the surviving skeleton crew’s remit is strictly maintenance, not new content, with the studio’s spokesperson clarifying that fewer than 10 staff remain to handle performance patches on Thick as Thieves.
What It Signals for the Immersive Sim Genre
OtherSide’s statement framed the cuts as a genre-wide problem rather than a one-off failure, arguing that “OtherSide’s DNA is built on immersive sim games that have lengthy development cycles.” That’s a familiar refrain in a corner of the industry that has repeatedly struggled to turn cult acclaim into commercial sustainability, from Arkane’s Redfall stumble to Otherside’s own 2018 release Underworld Ascendant.
For Australian and New Zealand players who picked up Thick as Thieves at its budget local pricing on Steam, the practical impact will simply be a game that stops evolving: no promised additional maps, modes or narrative content, only the occasional stability patch from a studio now surviving on a skeleton crew. It’s a familiar, sobering pattern for fans of the immersive sim genre, who have watched several ambitious projects in this space fail to find a sustainable audience despite passionate niche followings.
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