System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster offers fully restored co-op multiplayer

by Morgan Shaver, Communications Manager at Nightdive Studios

Nightdive Studios has proven adept at “bringing lost and forgotten games back from the depths,” but the process hasn’t always been easy. Of the studio’s projects, System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster presented some of the greatest challenges, especially when it came to restoring the game’s co-op multiplayer. “When we started on the multiplayer, it was completely non-functional,” said developer Sam “Reki” Piper. “Years of neglect due to changes from both NewDark and community mods left it in a really dire state.”

To get the multiplayer up and running, the team had to navigate a myriad of issues from fixing bugs and crashes present from the original game, to reverse engineering missing source code, to dealing with dated network systems. “We knew from the beginning we had a monumental task ahead of ourselves,” explained developer Daniel Albano. “The original game used DirectPlay, which is nowadays considered a legacy component of Windows. The multiplayer system was also programmed for dial-up connections and implemented into an engine that wasn’t designed for multiplayer to begin with.”

In addition, the team had to create a lobby system from scratch and make the UI as controller-friendly as possible. Fortunately, improving System Shock 2’s multiplayer wasn’t an “all work, no play” situation. The developers put hundreds of hours into playing the multiplayer with each other to diagnose and troubleshoot issues and had a ton of fun in the process! Thanks to their hard work, players will now be able to enjoy fully functional, cross-platform co-op multiplayer on day one when System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster releases on PC and consoles June 26.