 Development of Thief III was delegated to the Warren Spector-supervised Ion Storm Austin, which had recently completed Deus Ex. According to Spector, Thief III would have been given to Core Design or Crystal Dynamics had he not accepted it. The game was announced for Windows and the PlayStation 2. On August 10, Spector commented that Ion Storm's first goal was to assemble a core team, composed in part of former Looking Glass employees, to design and plot the game. Thief II team members Randy Smith, Lulu Lamer, Emil Pagliarulo and Terri Brosius were hired to begin the project. On August 16, Ion Storm announced its hires, and stated that concept work on Thief III would begin in September. The team planned to "wrap up [the] loose ends" of the series, and they built directly upon the Thief III concept work done at Looking Glass. Thief III was eventually renamed Thief: Deadly Shadows, and it was released for Windows and the Xbox on May 25, 2004.
