Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Silicon Knights 'Mostly Working On Legal Issues'
Last week when Precursor Games teased its crowd funding campaign for a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, we reached out to Silicon Knights to find out how it was connected to the new studio. Today, we received a call from Mike Mays, chief financial officer at Silicon Knights who answered some of our questions.
As reported last week, art assets from Silicon Knights were sold to Precursor Games. Mays told Game Informer a different story. When employees were laid off, they had the option of purchasing art. Denis Dyack did not buy any, but others now at Precursor Games did.
According to Mays, Silicon Knights retained very little of the material from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, as the property is owned entirely by Nintendo. As we mentioned last week, Precursor Games hosts a forum for the GameCube title (including the official logo for Eternal Darkness, giving the forum an appearance of being official or sanctioned) alongside the one for Shadow of the Eternals, its current crowd-supported project.
Mays also told us that employees could "take computers," but clarified that those staff members did not take possession of the hardware immediately. Epic Games pursued legal action against the developer to insure that transferred PCs had been wiped clean before deaccessioning occurred.
He also shared with us that Silicon Knights is now "mostly working on legal issues." He declined to comment on how many people are currently employed at the company, saying only that it's "more than one." Mays also declined to answer a question about staffing distribution and would not clarify if there are any employees currently working on product development.
We reached out to Nintendo for some additional information on the disposition of the Eternal Darkness property and its thoughts on Precursor Games' tightly-connected spiritual sequel. As of publication, we have yet to receive a response.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
