Dyack creates a 30 minute video asking you to trust him
Last year, Kotaku ran an article that blew the downfall of Silicon Knights situation wide open. The article in question is here, titled “What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights’ X-Men: Destiny?” In it, Kotaku goes over what they’ve learned from sources close to Silicon Knights in regards the working conditions and poor handling of development cycles. The crux of the report alleged that Denis Dyack had a hand in everything, citing his large ego and poor management tactics as reasons for the once great developer’s significant drop in quality.
As you know, Dyack is now attached to the Eternal Darkness follow-up Shadow of the Eternals, and…it’s not doing so well out of the gate. It seems as if the CEO for Precursor Games has asked Denis Dyack to respond directly, because their Kickstarter (yep, both of them) is influenced by people who vehemently distrust Dyack and his shaky past.
Dyack claims that the piece is not true, and that it was linked so many times that it has “become” factual for many. Specifically, he alleges that he has “intercepted emails” from his own anonymous source that confirms his innocence. There’s no real hard evidence to prove his innocence though, so it seems as if this is a case of “he said she said,” with Dyack’s word against Kotaku’s.
My take on the whole situation is this. Whoever is in the “right” in this particular instance is irrelevant and may never come to light. Dyack has had a troubled past regardless of what was published in this article, and attaching him to the project guaranteed that you would have to deal with that baggage. The choice was made by Precursor Games the moment Dyack was attached, and that somewhat sealed their fate — now they have to deal with that.