Dyack Studio Buys Silicon Knights' Assets

We haven't heard from Silicon Knights' outspoken founder, Denis Dyack, for a while. That's because he's moved desks to a studio called Precursor Games, consisting of former Silicon Knights employees. And today Precursor confirmed that it has purchased art assets from its old studio.

The timing of the purchase is convenient, since Silicon Knights was known to be working on a spiritual successor to Gamecube cult hit Eternal Darkness. And, more importantly, it's a studio that has long been circling the drain, owing damages of millions of dollars to Epic following a court battle loss.

"We did purchase some art assets from Silicon Knights," said Precursor CEO Paul Caporicci, who was laid off from Silicon Knights last July. "And we were very happy to be able to put those assets created by the talented past employees to use."

He told Wired that the studio is continuing development of the Eternal Darkness successor, called Shadow of the Eternals - which is currently under a process of crowd-funding to move towards completion. Nintendo, the owner of the Eternal Darkness IP, has no problem with any of this.

"We’ve been in constant communication with [Nintendo], and they’ve been supporting in working with us to put the game on [Wii U]," Caporicci said. "They even wished us luck right before we launched the campaign. So we have a great relationship with them, and we’ll just see where that goes from here."

As for Dyack? He appeared on Silicon Knights' old forum to confirm his departure. "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 do see that some people are disappointed at the way things turned out, so was I and many others, believe me. However, rather then dwell on that, we are moving forward a positive direction that I hope you can also join."