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If you were wondering what the hell has happened to Silicon Knights, the developer behind Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Reqiuem and Too Human, then you might want to make yourself a cup of tea and sit down, because the news isn't good. According to a lengthy but revealing article by Kotaku, the Canadian developer now has only five or so staff members remaining, including founder Denis Dyack, as reported by anonymous former employees of Silicon Knights.
Following a series of layoffs, resignations, lawsuits, cancellations and poorly received releases (Too Human and X-Men: Destiny), the developer is now "completely devoid of experienced [game] developer talent", according to one source. An Eternal Darkness 2 demo was being worked on during the production of X-men: Destiny, but didn’t amount to anything satisfactory. Another former employee said:
The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior. It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side-team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear really hurt that demo. Other than that, I can't explain why things went so poorly for them [except that] a lot of key people responsible for the original Eternal Darkness are long gone.
The article also details the troubled development of X-Men: Destiny, which, if the sources are correct, sounds similar to the Team Bondi L.A. Noire fiasco, with reports of a high staff turnaround, ex-employees who worked on the game getting deleted from the credits, and an unpopular megalomaniac at the centre of it all.
It’s sad to hear of this kind of strife emerging from the developer who made Eternal Darkness, one of my favourite games of all time, but then it does also explain the shoddiness of Too Human and why the only thing we’ve heard about Silicon Knights recently is their failed attempts to sue Epic Games over Unreal Engine 3. I guess I can kiss my hopes for an Eternal Darkness sequel goodbye.
The anonymous sources show us only one side of the story. However, Dyack and the Silicon Knights management have refused to respond to the allegations.
Comments
12 years ago
Its a shame to hear of bad news for any studio, but unfortunately most people probably already assumed Silicon Knights was a doomed studio long ago.
12 years ago
News isn't surprising considering the reception their more recent games have been receiving that said its sad to hear that a studio that made one of my favourite games is being shut down.
12 years ago
This is really sad to hear but not surprising given the string of stories regarding Silicon Knights over the past few years (also the name Silicon Knights is just fantastic). Just a classic case of spending too much and too long on a failed project (Too Human) that forced them to downsize. If I recall as a result they lost a few potential deals on games that broke their line of funding and the writing was pretty much on the wall at that point.
Hopefully Dyak will either sell the rights to Eternal Darkness to someone or some odd acquisition will occur so that the series may get a sequel it deserves. If not, I'm content with it being one of those gems that has been lost in time as much as I would love to revisit a new story.