OtherSide Entertainment has confirmed that Thick as Thieves will not receive any further content updates, effectively ending development on the PvPvE stealth game. "To be frank, this is not the outcome that any of us want," the studio said in a statement to players.
The Announcement
The news broke via the game's official Discord and Steam community channels, where OtherSide told its remaining player base that the current build represents the final version of Thick as Thieves. No new maps, characters, modes, or balance patches are planned. The servers will remain online for the foreseeable future, but the development team has been reassigned or let go.
Thick as Thieves launched into early access in late 2023 after several closed playtests. The game pitched a novel twist on extraction shooters: asymmetric multiplayer where rival thieves infiltrate guarded mansions, avoid AI sentries, and outwit each other to steal artifacts and escape. Warren Spector's studio positioned it as an "immersive sim multiplayer" — a genre hybrid that sounded compelling on paper but struggled to find its footing in practice.
Why This Now
Player counts tell the story. SteamCharts data shows Thick as Thieves peaked around 2,000 concurrent users at launch and declined steadily to double-digit averages by mid-2024. For a multiplayer-only title with matchmaking-dependent design, that population floor makes sustainable development impossible. OtherSide, a relatively small studio backed by Tencent, likely faced a straightforward business calculation: continue funding a game with a shrinking community, or cut losses and redirect resources.
The competitive landscape didn't help. 2023–2024 saw a flood of extraction-adjacent releases — The Finals, Gray Zone Warfare, Escape from Tarkov's continued dominance — all fighting for the same hardcore PvPvE audience. Thick as Thieves' stealth-first, slower-paced approach differentiated it, but differentiation only matters if enough players show up to sustain the ecosystem.
Deconstruct the Impact
For the few hundred die-hards still queuing nightly, the announcement is a death sentence for their game of choice. Matchmaking will grow slower until it becomes functionally broken. The meta will fossilize without balance patches. And the implicit promise of early access — that today's rough edges become tomorrow's polished systems — goes unfulfilled.
For OtherSide, this marks a second high-profile struggle after Underworld Ascendant (2018) failed to meet expectations. The studio's pedigree — Spector, Paul Neurath, veterans of Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief — carries weight in immersive sim circles. But that lineage hasn't translated into commercial viability for multiplayer experiments. Tencent's patience, already tested by broader portfolio cuts across Western studios, appears to have run out.
For the genre, Thick as Thieves becomes another data point in the "immersive sim multiplayer" hypothesis: extremely difficult to execute, expensive to maintain, and ruthless in its player-count requirements. Deceit, Hidden Agenda, and now this — the graveyard grows.
The Broader Trend
Live-service fatigue is real, and it's not just battle passes and battle royales feeling it. Mid-tier multiplayer games with niche appeals face a brutal squeeze: they need enough players to fill lobbies instantly, but lack the marketing budgets or IP recognition to acquire them at scale. Steam's algorithm favors retention metrics that new titles struggle to generate before the player base evaporates.
OtherSide's statement hints at this reality. The phrase "not the outcome any of us want" reads less like PR spin and more like developers who built something they believed in, then watched the numbers dictate the ending. That tension — creative ambition vs. platform economics — defines the current moment for studios of this size.
Counterpoint: The Server Question
OtherSide says servers stay up. History suggests that's a timeline measured in months, not years. When The Cycle: Frontier shut down, Yager gave six months' notice. When Rumbleverse ended, Iron Galaxy gave three. "Foreseeable future" is corporate language for "until the hosting bill exceeds the goodwill value." Players should expect a sunset announcement within 2025.
What Comes Next
Watch OtherSide's next move. The studio hasn't announced a new project, and Tencent's investment strategy has shifted toward safer bets — established IPs, proven genres, larger teams. If Thick as Thieves was the studio's swing for a live-service hit, the miss may reshape what OtherSide is allowed to attempt next.
For players, the lesson is familiar: early access multiplayer games are bets on community growth, not just developer roadmaps. Thick as Thieves had ideas worth exploring — stealth as social deduction, extraction as heist cinema — but ideas don't populate lobbies. The final build is playable today. That's more than some dead games leave behind.
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