It is not news to anyone that Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake took a while to make. The remake started development in 2015, with a successful Kickstarter project held for it the following year. After a few engine changes and attempts at making the thing, it finally released back in 2023, a good eight years after development had started. But such a long wait is absolutely not worth calling the FBI over, folks, are we being serious right now? Which is, apparently, a thing that happened to Nightdive.
Speaking to FRVR, game director Stephen Kick spoke of the stress that came from working on the project and the large swathe of vitriolic comments targeted directly at him. “That was a really rough point in my life,” Kick explained. “I took a lot of that very personally because we had built up a considerable amount of just community respect and admiration, so much so that many people were willing to risk a not-insignificant amount of money on a project that I knew we were capable of doing.”
It wasn’t just some comments left on the game’s Kickstarter page or across the studio’s social pages. Kick notes that he “was threatened with lawsuits, any matter of things you could do to somebody.” He explained further, “We got reported to the IRS and the FBI. It was awful. There was probably a good month and a half where I could not sleep at night because of the weight of everything that had some down on the company.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m really not sure a video game you’re excited about is worth calling the FBI over. Right? Am I the one who’s lost their marbles here? In any case, even if it took a while, the System Shock remake did come out, and RPS contributor Jeremy Peel even gave it the coveted RPS Bestest Bests award. So, it seems like the wait was probably worth it!