OtherSide Entertainment Pledges Offline Survival for Thick as Thieves After Studio Layoffs

OtherSide Entertainment's Thick as Thieves has had a turbulent journey from concept to launch, and the road hasn't smoothed out since release. The game, which was first revealed over two years ago, captured some early excitement with a genuinely fresh mechanical hook: a multiplayer immersive sim where players would compete against one another for the same loot in real time. It was an ambitious pitch in a genre not exactly known for competitive multiplayer, and for a while it looked like OtherSide might carve out a unique niche.

That ambition took its first hit earlier this year when the multiplayer component was quietly dropped ahead of launch, leaving players with solo and co-op options only. While co-op immersive sims remain a rarity — which is itself something of a selling point — the downgrade from the original vision disappointed a portion of the audience that had been following development. The shift raised questions about the game's scope and whether the studio had encountered serious development difficulties.

Those concerns appear to have been warranted. Following the game's commercial launch, OtherSide Entertainment confirmed a round of layoffs affecting a meaningful portion of its team. The cuts strongly suggest that Thick as Thieves did not perform at the level needed to sustain the studio's workforce, a grim but increasingly familiar story in the current games industry climate where even modestly ambitious titles struggle to find their audience.

Despite the difficult circumstances, the remaining staff at OtherSide have delivered at least one meaningful commitment to their player base: the game will not be rendered unplayable. In an era when live-service titles and online-dependent games regularly vanish entirely when studios shut down or cut support, this pledge carries real weight. Players who purchased Thick as Thieves will retain a functional product, which is more than many studios have offered in comparable situations.

The broader context here is important. The games industry has seen a string of high-profile closures and abandonments in recent years, with titles becoming inaccessible overnight when servers go dark or licensing deals expire. OtherSide's decision to prioritize long-term playability — even in the face of financial strain — sets a quiet but notable example of developer responsibility toward their community.