As promised, Denis Dyack and Precursor Games have posted a lengthy video response to the allegations made against Silicon Knights and Dyack in the October 2012 Kotaku article.
The first question that Denis Dyack tackles in the 34-minute video is why he waited until after the Shadow of the Eternals crowdfunding campaign started before responding to all the damaging allegations made in the Kotaku article. Dyack’s main response to this question reads in part:
“From my perspective, let me be clear on the position. When I first saw this article I believed because there was not a single credible source, where nothing could be verified, that anyone would actually believe this.”
“I knew what they were saying, and the accusations about me embezzling money from Activision and being terrible to people were not true. But, I never really thought that people would believe it. But, from my perspective, now that I look at it, I probably should have come out sooner…”
“I was always aware that the allegations were not true. But, the severity of which, and the level of which people thought it was real, was not made apparent until we started trying to do [Shadow of the Eternals] fund raising, when it became overwhelmingly obvious, from everyone here at Precursor, all of our fans trying to get this game promoted, that they continued to run into this wall.”
“What really is disappointing for me is that such serious allegations are being made credible, that it has gotten a life on its own, and there isn’t any hard evidence what-so-ever, besides non-credible anonymous sources, that this every occurred.”
“… We realized that if I actually came on the record and said something, he [Andres McMillen, the author of the Kotaku article] would actually have his first credible source, making his article more credible. So we decided not to comment, because we felt the allegations were all untrue.”
Denis Dyack goes on to answer several, but not all, of the questions that were asked on Precursor Games’ forums. In general, Dyack’s position is that the allegations are untrue, and that the article is not credible at all because it is based on eight anonymous sources and can not be verified.
Ironically, as part of his evidence to support his position Dyack produces an unverifiable email that was allegedly written by Andrew McMillen to one of his sources, and later forwarded to Dyack by an anonymous source.
The one issue that Denis Dyack does not talk about in the video is the legal case between Silicon Knights and Epic Games — in which Silicon Knights was found to have deliberately copied code from Unreal Engine 3 for unauthorized use in SK’s Too Human game.
The questions he does answer can be found in the following segments:
0:00 – Introduction
2:30 – Why take so long to respond to the article?
6:19 – Andrew McMillen Email
11:52 – Allegation of diverting funds from XMD
19:55 – Allegation of why Silicon Knights left Nintendo
23:02 – Allegation of claims that artists are a “dime a dozen”
25:06 – Allegation of Activision demanding to know about staff leaving
26:54 – Allegation of Activision changing the credits
27:57 – Denis Closing Thoughts
29:46 – Paul and Shawn Closing Thoughts
