OtherSide Entertainment and Megabit announced Thick As Thieves, an immersive stealth-action multiplayer game set for release in 2026.
The game is coming out on the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Led by gaming veterans Warren Spector, Greg LoPiccolo and Paul Neurath, Thick As Thieves invites players to navigate a 1910s metropolis where every shadow conceals new challenges, from rival thieves and watchful guards, to a richly detailed city that changes with each heist.
Unveiled at The Game Awards, the Thick As Thieves trailer shows the action between rival thieves — four of whom are all trying to come away with the lion’s share of the loot in a big heist.
Warren Spector, cofounder of OtherSide Entertainment, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the game is kind of next generation of the work he started with the game Thief. Now, there are new emergent elements and strategies that appear when you have human minds behind the four major player rivals.
“OtherSide Entertainment’s co-founders helped pioneer the stealth action genre with the original Thief and Deus Ex games,” said Benjie Clarke, managing director of global publishing at Megabit, in a statement. “Their collaboration at OtherSide has rekindled this vision, now focused on pushing boundaries with fresh perspectives. Thick As Thieves marks the next step for what an immersive action game can accomplish and how sharing this experience with other players leads to incredible player-driven storytelling.”
Set in an alternate history metropolis where technology clashes with magic, Thick As Thieves immerses you in a complex, detailed world of glittering wealth, a thriving criminal underclass, and a touch of magic. As the upper class amasses wealth and power while the lower class struggles to survive, you weave your way through both worlds, pursuing treasure and glory with stealth and cunning.
Players engage in a unique competitive multiplayer experience, where infiltration, theft, and escape drive success. The game rewards clever tactics, planning, and improvisation. Thick As Thieves exemplifies OtherSide’s commitment to player-driven agency, creating an experience where each playstyle can unfold uniquely in a vibrant world.
“Thick As Thieves captures the vision of immersive gameplay that OtherSide was founded on” said Spector. “With this game, we’re empowering players to create their own stories in a world that values observation, craftiness, and creative problem-solving.”
“OtherSide was built to take the immersive sim genre to the next step. And what that means is multiplayer, campaign-oriented, not just live services. It’s a creative decision for us as much as a business model,” Spector said. “We wanted to go with what we call stealth action with a capital S and a capital A and put together a team of experienced and new people.”
In addition to Spector, I spoke with Greg Lapiccolo, who was the game director on the original Thief and understands stealth and Thief really well. And David McDonough, who was the lead designer, came from Firaxis, where he worked on RTS games.
The details of Thick as Thieves
Replayable emergent stealth action PvPvE gameplay: Navigate a realm where every shadow and corner may conceal a fresh challenge—from watchful guards to devious rivals to the ever-shifting, treacherous city itself. Arm yourself with keen awareness and crafty skills to thrive in this unpredictable world.
Be the thief you want to be: Every mission is an opportunity, and every opportunity can be approached creatively. Observation, clever planning, and crisp execution are essential, but with other thieves around it’ll never be that simple. Improvisation and inventiveness will be key if you are to survive and thrive.
The city with endless secrets: Delve into the city, a world rich in characters, stories, and mystery. Learn about the powerful, the criminal, and the craven as you break into their strongholds and steal both their gold and their secrets. Explore your own personal storyline, mission by mission, shaping your destiny and your journey from a nobody to a legend of crime.
A thieves tool kit: Your rise through the ranks will open doors – literally. Pick locks, hijack alarms, bamboozle guards, silence civilians, conceal your presence, and escape with your loot bag full. Whether you prefer to play slow and quiet or fast and loud, all the tools are at your disposal. Mastering them will be your challenge as you match wits against diverse hazards and adversaries.
Living world alternate history setting: Step into a vibrant alternate-history metropolis at the dawn of the 20th century, where the glow of gas lamps, neon, and magic light the way. Keeping an eye on its inhabitants and their daily habits might just help you….maybe the housemaid has spoken to her husband, who has spoken to the barmaid after a few drinks…. Understanding the world and its mysteries is vital. The wise thief is the superior thief.
OtherSide Entertainment was formed in 2016 by co-founders Paul Neurath and Warren Spector, who first started working together in the 1990’s, providing creative direction on games that pioneered the “Immersive Simulation” genre.
The studio’s vision is to create deeply immersive games that challenge the conventional approach and offer a fresh perspective, while empowering players to choose their own play style for a truly unique experience. OtherSide Entertainment is currently in development with tentpole titles including Argos: Riders On The Storm and Thick As Thieves.
The game is built for systemic replayability. Matches can take 20 to 30 minutes. The landscape, the target of the heist and the adversaries can add different dimensions to the game. But the game sets four rival thieves against each other in a mission to steal loot and to come out with the biggest haul. You can choose to spend your time outwitting the non-player characters or go after your fellow human players by setting traps that can cause them to lose their loot or just get knocked out of the match.
“It’s all systemically driven, which means everything you do is affecting the entire landscape and everything the other thieves do affects you as well,” Spector said. “So you’re competing with other thieves through all of these intricate ways.”
You could play the same map a 100 times and the matches would never come out the same because of the human element.
There’s nothing to stop human players from forming alliances and ganging up on other players. But there’s only one winner in a match. Each character is different and has a different story arc.
Spector said the title Thick as Thieves rolls off the tongue and it tells you that more than one thief is in the game.
There’s plenty of combat and aggressive play styles that work really well. You can ambush other thieves or stalk them and try to knock them out of the match.
“You have to think creatively and improvisationally about everything that’s happening,” Spector said.
Compared to prior Thief games, Spector said, “The biggest delta is is the introduction of other players. Most of what we’ve worked on in the past was single player, which were great experiences and we’re proud of and so forth but the introduction to the other humans with their own agendas in an immersive simulation has a completely different context when you’ve got other people in there. It’s way more intense.”
The game has light and shadow gameplay. You can hide in the dark from AI just like you could in any title. But can you hide from another player, looking with their own eyes?
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