Giant Bomb doesn’t cover many Kickstarters, but the will-it-or-won’t-it nature of Shadow of the Eternals, pitched as a spiritual successor to the beloved Eternal Darkness, has continued to capture my attention.
It’s also returned to Kickstarter today with a new funding goal and a singular story.
But let’s remember where we came from.
- Kotaku publishes an article with scathing allegations about working at Silicon Knights and the management of its leader, Denis Dyack.
- Layoffs continue to hit Silicon Knights, and the studio loses its ambitious lawsuit to Epic Games.
- Precursor Games is formed, sporting former Silicon Knights employees and, notably, Dyack.
- That studio launches Shadows of the Eternals on Kickstarter on May 13. At the time, it was asking for $1.35 million and was meant to fund the first of many episodes. The Kickstarter was only for the pilot episode, and apparently the later episodes would be cheaper to produce.
- The studio also started raising money (separately!) on its own website, creating additional confusion.
- With only $128,039 raised on Kickstarter and roughly the same on its own website (?!), Precursor Games cancels its Kickstarter project.
- Promises are made for another Kickstarter.
- A short, playable version of the game is shown to outlets, including Giant Bomb, at E3 and other places. Dyack and Precursor Games give interviews, admitting the studio sorta messed up.
- Ken McCulloch, a Precursor founding member and former Silicon Knights director, was arrested for possessing and accessing child pornography. His face is scrubbed from the studio’s website.
- WHAT?
- Shadows of the Eternals is relaunched on Kickstarter, is no longer episodic, and seeks to raise $750,000. There are other, apparently, other funding measures Precursor Games has access to that it’s not currently discussing. The old Solid Snake, David Hayter, is involved with the game, too.
- Entire world scratches its head at everything that’s happened.
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