Kenneth McCulloch, a long time Silicon Knights employee and a founding member of Precursor Games (the company behind the recently suspended Shadow of the Eternals crowdfunding campaign), has been arrested and is facing multiple child pornography charges.
Ken McCullock (pictured above) was arrested after an investigation dating back to April 2013 resulted in the execution of a search warrant on a St. Catharines, Ontario home on June 27th. According to a report from Niagara Regional Police Service, a “significant number of computer systems and peripheral devices were seized as evidence” during the raid. The 42-year-old McCulloch is currently being held in custody on “one count each of Possession of Child Pornography, Making Child Pornography Available, and Accessing Child Pornography.”
After learning of the charges against McCulloch, Paul Caporicci (CEO of Precursor Games) issued the following statement on the company’s forums:
“Having just learned of these disturbing charges today and based on the serious nature of them, Ken McCulloch is no longer affiliated in any way with Precursor Games.”
According to McCullock’s LinkedIn profile, he started with Silicon Knights in December 1992, and has worked on several high profile video games, such as; Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Eternal Darkness (where he managed a team of artists and co-wrote the game’s screenplay and supporting text), and both the unreleased and Xbox 360 versions of Too Human. McCullock’s job description at Precursor Games included “Lore Keeper, World Builder, [and] Dream Merchant.”
Precursor Games‘ crowdfunding efforts for the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness, Shadow of the Eternals, were put on hold earlier this month after the campaign quickly lost steam due in part to Denis Dyack’s involvement with the project. Although McCullock is no longer with the studio, and has not been convicted of any of the charges, it is hard to conceive of any possible way that a future Kickstarter for Shadow of the Eternals could succeed at this point.