OtherSide Entertainment just axed its Warren Spector-led immersive sim project codenamed Argos and cut 17 staffers effective end of May, per statements to Game Developer and Kotaku coverage. The studio called the current market “brutally challenging” and admitted the title “could have been a huge success in normal times” but was now unviable, while still praising the laid-off talent. This lands right after the May 20 release of their budget co-op heist game Thick as Thieves, which pulled mixed critic scores around 62 on Metacritic and generally unfavorable user reception amid low player interest.

OtherSide’s history reads like a string of near-misses: the broken 2018 Kickstarter title Underworld Ascendant that the studio now pretends never happened, the on-again-off-again System Shock 3 involvement that ended with Tencent taking the license, a canceled Dungeons & Dragons project in 2023, and now this. Argos had been teased back in 2022 as Spector’s return to the genre he helped define, yet details stayed scarce until the cancellation note surfaced. The pattern suggests a studio that keeps promising legacy-level work but repeatedly scales back or folds under pressure.

The layoffs echo the broader industry bloodbath hitting even storied names, with affected staff already posting they’re on the market. OtherSide’s polite corporate language doesn’t change the receipts: another small team eviscerated while trying to chase the immersive sim crown.