If you bought Thick As Thieves hoping the post-launch roadmap would eventually fill it out into the game it promised to be, that door has officially closed. OtherSide Entertainment game director Jeff Hickman posted a message to Steam confirming the studio will not be releasing any further content updates for the game.
"To be frank," Hickman writes, “this is not the outcome that any of us want, but we're facing the reality that ongoing development of extra content, modes and systems is not a viable path.”
How a stealth game ran out of time
Thick As Thieves launched in May with a price tag of just $5 and a campaign that stretched across only two maps. The idea was that co-op and solo play would give those maps enough replay value to sustain the experience while post-launch updates expanded things. That plan never got the traction it needed.
The first content update did add rebindable keys, which was a basic quality-of-life fix the game probably should have shipped with. But it wasn't enough to move the needle on player retention. Meanwhile, OtherSide's other project in development was cancelled, removing the financial runway the studio needed to keep both teams working.
Two rounds of layoffs followed. Hickman's statement confirms that "only a very small team remains," which other reporting puts at fewer than 10 employees. That's not a team that can ship new missions, modes, or systems.
What actually happens to the game now
Here's the thing: the game isn't being shut down. OtherSide and publisher Megabit are working on a transition to peer-to-peer servers for co-op play, which removes the dependency on dedicated cloud servers. Hickman says "the gameplay and flow of your experience will remain virtually identical" under the new setup, and solo play is completely unaffected by the change.
Once that migration is complete, Megabit takes over maintenance responsibilities, handling bugs and issues as they come up. The game stays playable. It just won't grow.
The $5 question nobody wants to answer
Launching at $5 was a gamble that backfired in ways that are hard to fully separate from the game's other problems. The price point signaled something to players before they even downloaded it, and that perception stuck. A game asking $5 at launch reads as either a demo, a desperate fundraiser, or something the developers themselves weren't confident in.
What most players miss is that pricing decisions like that rarely happen in isolation. They reflect what a studio believes the market will bear given the product's current state, and $5 for a two-map stealth game with a four-hour campaign suggests OtherSide knew it wasn't shipping a complete experience.
The key here is that Thick As Thieves may have always had a relatively small potential audience regardless of price or content volume. Stealth games with PvPvE multiplayer are a niche within a niche, and the pivot to include solo play, while welcome, didn't dramatically expand who the game was for.
What players who still care should do
The game as it exists right now, with its existing missions and mechanics, is what you're getting permanently. If you've been putting off learning the stealth systems or haven't finished the campaign, the Thick As Thieves beginner's guide covers all 16 missions and the loadout choices that matter most. For players focused on clean runs, the gadgets tier list breaks down which tools are worth upgrading and which ones you can skip entirely.
The studio's situation is genuinely rough. Working in games is, as Hickman put it, "at times delightful and at other times heartbreaking." The people who built Thick As Thieves clearly wanted to keep building it. The resources just weren't there.
For players who want to get the most out of what the game currently offers before the server migration completes, the full Thick As Thieves guide collection has everything you need to make those two maps count.
