OtherSide Entertainment has trimmed the multiplayer fat from Thick as Thieves, ditching the PvPvE mode that defined its original pitch for solo single-player and two-player co-op.

The Steam developer update spells it out with clinical precision: 'When we first revealed Thick as Thieves we intended to focus on PvPvE gameplay. However, as development progressed and the world of Kilcairn has come to life, we found that we were having more fun with solo and co-op play.' This allows the team, led by immersive sim veteran Warren Spector, to 'double down' on dynamic stealth mechanics.

Announced back at Day of the Devs in December 2024 as a competitive heist sim where players vied for loot amid AI threats—like a multiplayer Thief—the game now aligns with more traditional co-op formulas seen in successes like Deathloop, sans the PvP edge.

Community response on Reddit's r/ImmersiveSim tilts toward quiet approval, with top comments like 'Thank Fucking God' (87 upvotes) and 'Good call' (77 upvotes) reflecting wariness of live-service pitfalls and dead lobbies. A few voices mourn the lost chaos, but most see longevity in the pivot: multiplayer experiments rarely outlive their launch week.

Ahead of a gameplay trailer at next week's Triple-I Initiative, this shift reads less like bold evolution and more like pragmatic survival for a small studio's ambitions. The receipts from dev blogs and forums confirm what we've seen too often: scope creep kills more projects than success.