Nightdive Studios' System Shock remake is being adapted for virtual reality. The new version, System Shock VR, is in development at Flat2VR Studios and is listed on Steam for wishlisting, PC Gamer reports. No release date has been announced.
Going by the game’s Steam description, System Shock VR is a straight VR translation of the existing remake rather than a separate spin-off in the mould of Half-Life: Alyx. The setup is unchanged: the player is caught hacking into TriOp, takes a deal from Edward Diego, and arrives six months later at the beginning of the Citadel Station incident.
Alongside PC VR on Steam, the project is set to support the Meta Quest and PSVR2 headsets. Nightdive’s original remake launched in 2023; PC Gamer scored it 80% and named it Best Remake of 2023 in its annual Game of the Year awards.
A small audience to convert into
The commercial question around the announcement is the size of the VR market it is aimed at. The Steam Hardware and Software Survey — which Valve says is "incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer" — puts the share of Steam users with a VR headset well below 2%. That figure does not cover the whole Steam user base, and adding Quest and PSVR2 owners widens the pool, but the combined audience remains a small slice of the overall gaming market.
A recent comparison is Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, another VR game built on a well-known PC franchise. It was received positively by players and critics but peaked at 233 concurrent players on Steam. In June, six months after that launch, publisher Vertigo Games closed one of its studios.
The VR market remains a challenging space.
Neither Nightdive nor Flat2VR Studios has said how much of the remake is being rebuilt for the format, and no pricing has been given. The original System Shock, meanwhile, is currently discounted to $15 on GOG and the Humble Store.
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