Denis Dyack, the former head of Silicon Knights, recently broke his silence and addressed questions raised in a recent report that the popular gaming news blog Kotaku ran in October of last year entitled: "What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights' X-Men: Destiny?"
The video begins with Dyack explaining that he is breaking his silence because, even though he feels the aforementioned article is factually inaccurate, the negative press is directly affecting the Kickstarter efforts of Precursor Games, which is seeking crowd sourced assistance with Shadow of the Eternals, the spiritual success of Eternal Darkness, one of Silicon Knights' most beloved efforts, even till this day.
Dyack then answers questions posed by members of his new company's community forums and argues that statements made in the Kotaku piece are all false because they come from non-credible, anonymous sources. He also explaina that the very reason why himself and Silicon Knights never responded to any comments on the article is because it would have lent credibility to the piece in the first place.
He goes one to then state that the article was initially pitched to Wired before Kotaku (it was written by Andrew McMillen, a freelance writer and someone who is not part of Kotaku's full time roster of contributors), but the first publication passed due to supposed lack of documentation, to further paint the Kotaku piece as being factually flimsy.
One of the more compelling parts of the video is when Dyack decides to address a key accusation stated in the Kotaku article, by reading a less than complimentary YouTube comment that was aimed directed at him. The comment brings up the belief, which again is what the Kotaku piece asserts, that funds from X-Men: Destiny were diverted and put towards other projects.
In response, Dyack notes that they actually sunk the studios own money, to compliment the existing budget. Apparently, two million dollars more than what they had been paid. In the end, the game's publisher, Activision, questioned such a move, and Dyack admits that mistakes were made and apologizes for how it turned out.
Still, Dyack spends most of his time running down the Kotaku piece, mostly arguing that anonymous sources are not to be trusted. As a direct result, Kotaku’s editor in chief, Stephen Totlio, posted his own response, who basically states that much of what Dyack is rallying against is not actually included in the original report:
McMillen’s report includes no mention of embezzling money, but multiple mentions, by former employees, that people who were supposed to be working on X-Men Destiny were at times pulled away to work on other company projects. It is just one detail of many describing Silicon Knights' development priorities. The embezzlement charge is more severe, of course, and was something McMillen had heard rumored during his reporting. Reporters hear many rumors and try to deduce whether they're true. This rumor doesn’t appear in the article, which should show how much credibility McMillen and Kotaku were ultimately able to give it.
Totilo also explains that his outlet performed due diligence by confirming the anonymous sources, even if they could not be done publically.
As others have stated, in the end, this is really just a case of he said, but then he said. Though one can’t ignore the reputation that Dyack has developed online, as a person who causes drama on message boards, upon hearing not so kind things about his games. It also remains to be seen if the contentious report will indeed have a discernible negative impact on Shadow of the Eternals.
