Rumours Of The Demise Of Silicon Knights Are Greatly Exaggerated

Founder Denis Dyack joins Precursor full time, but studio is still "alive"

by Damien McFerran Fri 10th May 2013

E52381 F4 Dd46 4 F60 Adb8 D5 Abdaaed6 E3

Silicon Knights chief financial officer Mike Mays has refuted claims that the studio is all but dead, telling Polygon that it is "very busy" and "definitely alive".

The studio remains embroiled in a legal battle with Epic Games, and insider reports suggest that focus on creating Eternal Darkness 2 has essentially crippled the company.

Precursor Games — which is based just 30 miles from Silicon Knights' now empty offices and is run by former staffer Paul Caporicci — is currently raising funds for a "spiritual successor" to Eternal Darkness. Shadow of the Eternals is coming to PC and Wii U, and while Precursor has stopped short of claiming it is a direct sequel, it does appear to have Nintendo's support.

Caporicci confirmed yesterday that Precusor had purchased assets from Silicon Knights. Furthermore, Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack has taken to the company's official forum to state that he has departed to join Precursor as chief creative officer:

It has been a very long time. I am sorry I was away so long, it was not intended and I truly regret that I could not interact more with you all. I wanted to do so but it simply was not an option for me at the time. I really hope you can understand.

As most of you already probably have seen, I am no longer at Silicon Knights and I joined Precursor Games some time ago. I invite you all to join us at Precursor Games if you are so inclined. I will be interacting more there (our whole team will be — it is one of the principle [sic] pillars of the company) and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish with the community and our crowd sourcing campaigns.

I do see that some people are disappointed at the way things turned out, so was I and many others, believe me. However, rather then [sic] dwell on that, we are moving forward a positive direction that I hope you can also join.

Silicon Knights has so far refused to confirm what projects it is now working on or even where it is now based, but according to Polygon, the company has not yet filed for bankruptcy.

[source eurogamer.net, via polygon.com]

Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming's past glories.

1
Maestr0
Fri 10th May 2013

Good news for them i suppose...

2
Peach64
Fri 10th May 2013

What a sham. They're just trying to disassociate themselves from the mess they got into. Precursor is SK in all but name.

3
AJWolfTill
Fri 10th May 2013

Anyone else think that some of the money they raise from crowd sourcing is going to be spent on legal fees?

4
Kirk
Fri 10th May 2013

With most of the main guys from Silicon Knights having basically transferred over to Precursor Games and them making a "spiritual successor" to Eternal Darkness, even going so far as to buy some Eternal Darkness 2 assets from Silicon Knights directly, it seems pretty obvious that basically Silicon Knights is just taking a wee sidestep to get out from under all the crap that's now plaguing that company and re-establishing itself as Precursor Games.

I'm pretty sure there's some legal basis and benefits to doing it this way rather than trying to salvage what is left of Silicon Knights, or indeed dealing with all the crap and legal shenanigans that are still attached to Silicon Knights, while trying to make a new game.

I'm not really bothered by that to be honest and I can kinda see how it's certainly one way to get out of their current pickle and start afresh while basically still being the same company at heart.

I don't think it's something we need to worry about as gamers interested in their new game or how they are going to deal with us as customers etc.

I hope they get the funding the need for Shadow of the Eternals and I hope the game delivers because I really do want to play that game.

So, as long as they are definitely being totally genuine and straight up with us, good luck to them I say.

5
Nintenjoe64
Fri 10th May 2013

I hope the game isn't a crock of dundees because I'm sure Nintendo would publish a sequel entirely by themselves if they liked the concept of the new game.

Eternal Darkness is probably my second favourite GC game behind RE4. I think it was my favourite game of all time when I first bought it so I hope they don't mess it up.

I do worry that Precursor might have been trying to blackmail Nintendo into publishing it by saying it's for PC and Wii U. Nintendo don't want this game to kill any chance of Eternal Darkness 2 and if the ED team make a multi platform game based in that universe, it pretty much takes the franchise out of Nintendo's catalogue.