That's good. There's no benefit to having paid for a promise in the first place.

The thing is, if a company never foolishly did what it can't do -- decide in advance on exactly what date a game will be completed -- then all of these "extensions" would have occurred just the same behind the scenes, but they wouldn't have mattered to you. You wouldn't have known about them. You would have simply discovered the release of a new game instead of having discovered the rumor of an hypothetical game.

We will all do ourselves and the quality of video games a great service by not even thinking about a video game until it actually exists -- or at the least not obsessing over it.

If you hear about a game that seems interesting, perhaps because a company wanted to generate hype and pre-order cash, then add it and its so-called "Release Date" (if given) to your "Games of Interest" list and promptly forget about it until it becomes a thing of reality. There is no profit to be had by doing otherwise, and conversely a whole lot of harm to the quality of video games -- both in terms of game design and the business practices that accompany them.

Way too many people are creating multiple problems -- for themselves, and also for the video game industry -- by their own behavior. I put the bulk of the blame on the corruption of the media, but that is a subject for another time.

Now, will somebody please help me down from this soapbox?

Hello,

gog should already reimburse me! to cash it is quick but to cancel a pre-order which was scheduled for August 2021, it is clearly total backbiting both at nightdrive and gog which has not responded to the refund request since 12/19/2021! Let this serve as a lesson: finished, I will not buy anything in pre-order!

I got my refund within days…

I was just checking where the hell has System Shock 2 Enhanced disappeared. You know, the one we were suppose to get as pre-order bonus. Just to learn System Shock Remake is nowhere to be found either. This is pathetic.

Now I don't even know whether I should just leave it and wait and hope they don't forget that I've preordered it or just not bother with it and get money back. I love the System Shock franchise, but this really sucks hard.

I'm going to wait and check that *early 2022 beta* which I would not get anyway because I just pre-ordered the game here and not on Kickstarter. But I would not be surprised if they open Beta for early buyers as well.
As for the SS2 EE, they are working on that, but the only thing I remember was the short video clip with VR motion, I was not impressed since I don't care about VR, in my opinion they should release it sooner and add the VR later on.

I didn't know it was so tough to show "TBA" instead of a make-up date. We are well into the 21st century and who knew this would pose such a problem to a website.

so.... is this actually coming out?
is it progressing?
Or is it a cheaper star citizen?

I genuinly liked the demo and want to see this completed.

But I've been BURRRRRRNED by EA games and Star Citizen before (base package and that's it) so I don't throw down money on games anymore until they're done.

So.... see above questions.

i believe the original release date was late 2017, the kickstarter promise was a remake of the original game. in 2018 we learned they were working on their own game they were gonna call system shock, instead of remaking the original. then it got put on hiatus for a while. then they picked it up again, i guess after night dive took over, now were here. i dont believe anything the devs post anymore and i wouldnt buy it until it comes out and is actually good.

Night Dive didn't take over, they were in control of the project since its inception in fall 2015 (correction: 2014). The project prior to the hiatus was being directed by Jason Fader, under the employment of NDS. After the clock ran out on their very meager Kickstarter funding, everyone had to be laid off or moved to another project and the CEO of the company took over. Timeline looks like this:

2014: NDS begins working on vertical slice demo for Kickstarter and private investment in Unity

September 2015: Night Dive Studios releases System Shock Enhanced Edition after acquiring its license

Spring 2016: Kickstarter for System Shock remake begins with a paltry goal and the hopes that private investors will make up the rest

June 2016: Kickstarter goal met. The game is directed by Jason Fader, a senior producer on Fallout: New Vegas, and vague promises of involvement from Chris Avellone (Black Isle writer) and various industry veterans that worked on or around System Shock 1 are made. ESTIMATED RELEASE: December 2017

ca. Spring 2017: No luck with investors, so the director decides to switch to a more prestigious engine, Unreal Engine 4 (released in 2014). The hiring process for engineers familiar with the engine begins and the team starts to port their work over.

ca. September 2017: NDS acknowledges the game won't be out by December 2017, and moves the estimated date to 2018, mentioning engine switches and feature creep. The first delay.

February 2018: Fader is removed from the project, CEO Stephen Kick steps in.

March 2018: NDS is running out of money on the project and the game is nowhere near complete. Larry Kuperman, director of business development at NDS supposes there will have to be some kind of reorganization on the project (correctly) and proffers 2020 as the new release date, acknowledging "no one wants to hear it." The second delay.

Mid 2018: The project runs out of funding and goes on hiatus. Almost every employee on the project exits, including all the industry veterans. NDS make the announcement of the hiatus to almost no one's surprise. For most of the rest of the year, Kick corrals as many people back onto the project as he can, most likely vowing minimal resource allocation until actual investment comes in or NDS's balance sheets can support it (speculation).The game's many creeping features are reined in and the project moves back to a fairly strict remake but with modern quality-of-life concessions.

2019: The project putters along at the pace of an anemically underfunded indie game. No investment is found. By the end of the year it's fairly obvious that 2020 won't be happening. Despite promises of being a strict remake, strange things start to pop up like brand new enemies even though the old ones clearly aren't done, or thematic changes like the humanoid mutants being vat-grown and naked instead of mutated crew people.

2020: The year progresses much like the last one with minimal updates being provided to the original Kickstarter backers. Stephen Kick does several interviews with major gaming outlets, saying things like NDS is pandemic-proof because of their remote company structure (to PC Gamer), explaining what happened in 2018 and 2019 to Noclip in a video documentary, and assuring backers that progress is going well.

December 31, 2020: The game is still not out. It is now delayed until Summer 2021. The third delay. The game has now been late for most of its development.

First half of 2021: Updates reveal an actual decent amount of progress, but begin to become infamous for over-sharing simple art assets like door animations. A new version of the demo is released which shows the entirety of the first deck complete. Maybe the game isn't far from release! The community manager for NDS says the game is almost entirely complete on the company Discord server.

Summer 2021: Most of the summer passes with no actual news of a release. Night Dive release a trailer for the second deck/level of the game, which doesn't actually look done. The game does look considerably closer to release as evidence of the later game (locations from later levels, endgame enemies) appears. Here on GOG, the release date is still August or September 2021, i.e. the end of summer. By the actual end of summer, this changes to December 31, 2021 on GOG and "coming soon" on Steam.

September 2021: Kick does an interview on a minor Youtube channel with sub numbers in the hundreds or thousands saying that the game will not be out by the end of the month. The fourth delay.

December 2021: Embracer-owned Koch Media subsidiary Prime Matter signs a publishing partnership with NDS. They will assist with marketing and testing the game as it transitions to completion. NDS make the claim that the backer beta promised to Kickstarter backers by December 2017, which is supposed to be accessed before the general public release, is on track for release in "early 2022," revealing that the date on GOG is definitely wrong (rather than merely tentative as suggested by the page). This also suggests the game is still in alpha after 6 years. The game is now said to release in 2022, a virtual surety since there is now a publishing deal. The fifth delay.

Early 2022: The entire first trimester of 2022 passes with no mention at all of the backer beta. Larry Kuperman does an interview with Shacknews showing footage of the game in "pre-alpha" (correction: "pre-beta," most likely chosen because if the game were in beta, the backers should be playing it) from the summer 2021 build. A couple of weeks later, PC Gamer and Gamerant assert that the game is "almost entirely finished" and "complete" respectively. It has been a year since the community manager said the same thing. Early 2022 ends and there is no backer beta. The new date on GOG as of the start of the year is December 31, 2022, with the date on Steam still being "coming soon."

June 12 2022: NDS releases a new trailer for the game showing off pretty much as much of it as would be reasonable to show of a complete game, however it still hasn't been rated by any content rating agencies, there's still been no mention of the backer beta, and the trailer has no mention of a release date. Backers who bought into the project via backerkit are charged for their merch. When asked when the game is going to release on Twitter, NDS say, "Sooner than you think" ( https://mobile.twitter.com/NightdiveStudio/status/1536086781669437440 ) implying that they actually know when the game will release. This would be a lie if they actually said it aloud, since they have no way of knowing how long the rating process will take.

As of now, no one knows when the game will be out, but it definitely seems to be getting more likely over time. Supposing the major hurdles now are getting the game rated, releasing the backer beta with a sufficient window to reward the people who've been waiting literally 6 years now to play the game before the general public gets access, and porting the game to new consoles that didn't even exist when the engine switch happened, I can't see the game coming out in the next month and given NDS's penchant for overstating progress and the fact that the year is already half over, it's entirely possible that the game will be delayed again into 2023.

Week of July 14, 2022: Prime Matter tweets that the game will be on display at Gamescom, a European games expo that takes place in Cologne the last week of August each year. Technically this says nothing about the game's release date, but given that the official Kickstarter is saying the backer beta is, "just around the corner" but that the company is busy preparing for Gamescom, there is probably a loose suggestion in NDS' minds that Gamescom is the earliest that the backer beta could possibly release. The last estimate for the backer beta's release was from December 2021, saying that they were "on track to have beta to backers in early 2022" on the Kickstarter. If the backer beta released as of their July 14th update, it would have released 2 1/2 months later than it was on track for at this point, and if it releases on August 24 during Gamescom then it will be nearly 4 months later than they were expecting.

There are 12 months in a year. The backers were charged for postage of physical goods 4 months ago and no one has their merch yet. If the beta releases in August then the backers will have a maximum of 4 months to preview and/or test the game before a 2022 release. The game has still not been PEGI rated, nor by the ESRB.

The game is currenlty 4 years, 6 months and 14 days late, and there are 5 1/2 months left before it would be delayed for a sixth time.

So many tears in this thread. This amuses me.

MIA
RIP

A good strategy is to avoid buying things which don't exist. I'm so glad I didn't back this game.

August 23, 2022: Gamescom begins! There should be news about the progress on System Shock by the end of the week, August 27, which also marks the one-year anniversary of the game "coming soon." As of this day, all that is known about the booth at Gamescom is that there's a new demo and someone is dressed up like SHODAN. No footage is to be found anywhere on the internet.

The game is still not PEGI- or ESRB-rated - rather unusual for a game that has been allegedly complete for the past four months. It is likely to go into Gamescom lacking a rating, which would suggest that it still won't release for at least a few weeks after the show is over.

The game is currently 4 years, 7 months, and 23 days late, and there are 4 1/4 months left before it would be delayed for a sixth time.

August 24, 2022: Prime Matter uploads a video of their stalls at Gamescom, which is about 2 hours of people walking around looking bored in front of featureless MATO stations (another game that is "coming soon") before a SHODAN cosplayer shows up at 2:09:10 and stands there for 45 minutes before walking off. The remaining hour in the video is of people (silently) standing around talking to each other. The only gameplay of any game shown is around 3:14:32 when they turn the camera toward the Goat Simulator stall, which is roughly second or third cousin to System Shock, also technically an Embracer property.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eXMvEgT3kk

Later in the day, it's revealed that all NIghtdive has to show is the trailer from June 12, and once again... no release date.

Given that there are two fairly substantial holidays before year's end in the United States where NDS are headquartered, there is no release date, the game is not rated and the backer beta is not out yet, the probability for a 2022 release is incredibly low at this point.

August 25, 2022: UPDATE! The new demo shows that some humanoid mutants are clothed again, indicating that NDS must have realized that it made no sense for them to have uniformly removed their clothes. Prime Matter representatives spend several hours playing the same first half of the first level in the demo over and over again, never reaching Research (the second level). The demo is also preceded by the playable intro, which doesn't really look all that playable or finished and doesn't transpire in the way that it did in the original manual or game.

my hopes that the game will come out in my lifetime are also more than low. Thanks for the infos

Seriously. The term "scam" lost any and all meaning thanks to whiny, knee jerking gamers.

It's really a win-win for me; I really loved the demo, so I either get a game I like OR I get to see malding nerds and I save $40.

No one has any clue what they're getting into when they back a kickstarter, at all. There's no excuse for the ignorance in the wake of Chris Robert's own personal white whale in addition to Tim Schafer's own Waterloo. Kickstarter is not a publisher, the guarantees offered by those using it should be taken with a grain of salt, and any money spent there should be seen as a gamble on some level.