http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/20/4347354/denis-dyack-addresses-backers-and-responds-to-kotaku-article

I'll always <3 you Denis. Very humble and honest. Good on him, whatever you think of the whole thing.

Phew, you're really asking for it duder. Just sayin'. I am interested to see what the dude has to say. Not sure it'll convince anyone, but best of luck to him and his coworkers.

Whatever, it's your money. Don't come to me crying when he sticks you like pig.

Interesting video; I wonder if it'll convince the people on the fence to trust him enough to back the Kickstarter...

People are weird. They'll talk about Kotaku being the scum of the earth right up until something gets just the right kind of momentum, and then suddenly trust them implicitly on the matter. Maybe this'll convert everyone, maybe it'll just piss em off, or maybe no one will even watch the video or notice or care. It's hard to know. Hopefully the studio ends up finding some success. The stuff they are working on certainly seems interesting.

Do not forget: Hitler was very charismatic and that didn't stop him from doing what he did. Just because Dyack seems like a nice guy in this vid it doesn't mean he is.

Well, we've got our Godwin.

Back on-topic, still watching the video, but... calling the Kotaku story untrue because there were "unverifiable sources" then reading an "anonymous" email? I don't think that's how it works, Denis.

It's weird that people have turned on Kotaku over this when it's a rare example of them doing actual journalism. It's even corroborated by the video Precursor put out - the demo they describe in the article is the demo we got.

The response is also much, much too late to undo the damage his involvement has done. The shadows of X-Men Destiny and Too Human hang over Precursor and would even if Kotaku hadn't put their piece out.

@gaff said:

In the one case, a person without knowledge of the situation took the word of people he did not know who said they had knowledge of the situation and constructed a purportedly factual timeline about people, companies, and events.

In the other case, a person with knowledge of the situation and of the anonymous person relayed correspondence given to him by a person he trusted in order to defend himself and his company from huge accusations.

Trying to insist that no one can say that unverified and anonymous sources making huge allegations should not be taken as fact unless those anonymous sources are refuted with only publicly verifiable sources is absurd.

Always a good sign when something is labelled "Responds to Kotaku Article". Yeah, only good things come out of that.

I am sorry I really can't take this seriously in any stretched of the imagination. You have some website that claims allot of things like women have similar symptoms that a PTSD victims has because they have been playing COD online or something down the line, and other wonderful claims. On the other hand you have Denis Dyack that says he does not run the company and so on and try to address the whole matter then later on in the apology film they asking for money.

Its probably just me but it seems really rude, yes they are trying to make this game but on the other hand, it does seem rather strange that they are asking for so much cash. I am guessing they are probably going to make the game because why would you spend so much money on licensing Cryengine3 then maya or max also/probably zbrush, and then buying allot of development computers. It just seems off to me if they would not make the game even after using so much money.

Good on Precursor for making a public statement. There continues to be so much vitriol floating around the inter-webs on this topic that some sort of response was clearly required.

I don't really have enough verifiable facts to form an opinion either way (and neither do the vast majority of others commenting on this). I do know 2 things however: Articles that get turned down by even one news outlet for lack of facts always should set off red flags, and I sincerely doubt that large publishers like Activision, armed with their accountants and consultants, would allow shareholder fraud as alleged in the article (or at least sue them very publicly, which they have a pretty good record of doing).

An issue with the industry is that it is still insular. You can't speak out about how badly one project or company was because it might effect your career and future employment which is why many speak only with the protection of anonymity. Dyack suggesting that we shouldn't believe them because they won't come forward is silly because the pool of workers in that part of the world is very small.

Over/under on the Precursor games CEO firing (or getting rid publicly of) Dyack in the final stretch to try and make the funding goal?

Precursor Games will probably make it on the cache of Eternal Darkness alone. And I'm not against them making their goal and creating a game but I am against Dyack suggesting the media and his former workers are the enemies.

I know it's probably not the intended effect, but the only thing this video really does is just stir up memories of Denis Dyack's bungled PR campaign for Too Human. The NeoGAF feud. The 1UP Yours appearance. The whole godawful shebang, and those sorts of memories don't really inspire confidence in this new product.

To some degree, I feel bad for Dyack, and I maybe feel even worse for the people that have chosen to work with him. Denis seems genuinely enthusiastic about making games, and I don't think he ever set out to make bad games or to intentionally pull the wool over people's eyes. He just seems like the type of person that lets his passion and his aspirations cloud his judgement, and with that clouded judgment comes extremes of over-promising and under-delivering, along with possibly even some ethical compromises made with what he might have seen as the best of intentions. As is the case with Dyack and his recent efforts, the unfortunate end result of that brand of hopeless enthusiasm is losing the trust of hardcore enthusiast gamers, the only type of gamer that actually matters in these crowdfunding campaigns.

On the other hand, Jason Schreier over on NeoGAF asserts that Stephen Totilo made sure "that the final published article was both ethically sound and accurate". And personally, I find it strange that it took Denis Dyack so long to address the Kotaku piece (maybe too busy with destroying every copy of SK's games?). And of course, there's the whole Epic vs Silicon Knights that looms over Dyack. Then again, it is Kotaku.

Eugh, this is just turning out to be a sort of a stalemate.

wow... seriously?

I would like to quote Justin McElroy when talking about this:

"I would not trust these motherfuckers with a ice cream cone in the winter time. I would not trust these motherfuckers with my dog's leash, if I had a second leash attached to that dog and I was holding it at the same time."

Poetry. Pure poetry.

Dyack doesn't have the most inspiring history to begin with. So, even if you for some reason don't buy Kotaku's story regarding development at Silicon Knights, there's plenty of reason to not trust this man with your money.

I find it really hard to believe they will hit their goal with the slow start they have.

Even if you ignore all the controversy surrounding this, the rewards vs what you have to pay just aren't very good, if you want the full game, you have to pay full retail price, why would anyone do that?

They straight up lied about Kickstarter not being international, that lie has nothing to do with past mistakes and it's very directly related to this project and Precursor games, lots of learning still happening it seems.

@truthtellah said:

Yeah that's where I sit. I don't need Kotaku to tell me to be wary about giving Dyack money.

...and a Kotaku response video isn't changing my opinion either.

Silicon Knights just bums me out. Too Human should've been a fantastic game. It had an exciting premise and interesting lore. It promised to be a modern hack n slash RPG in the vein of Diablo. When you consider their past work (from Blood Omen to Eternal Darkness) it's not like the studio was full of mouth breathers who couldn't string two lines of code together. It bothers me that hubris is what ultimately killed that company, and it bothers me that Dyack's meltdown on GAF led to irreparable damage to the studio's reputation.

I'm not donating to their kickstarter but I do hope they get funded and they make an excellent game. The whole thing with X-Men Destiny, I don't know what happened. Maybe Dyack was a prick and stole funds from one project to help ED2 along, or maybe it was another example of colossal fuck-ups and mismanagement. Either way, we got an incredibly boring game that was average at best and poor at worst. That's two strikes between Too Human and X-Men Destiny. I hope they can pull it around as their creative team has great ideas.

"Denis Dyack wants your money."

To date this is the entirety of Giant Bomb's bombcast news coverage on this project. :(

Not buying it.

Oh that's glorious.

But seriously OP. Dyack? Honest? After his studio stole code from the largest engine in the industry and used someone else's money to secretely make a demo for an Eternal Darkness sequel? Man, you have a strange definition of honesty.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I watched this last night. I don't understand it. It comes off as incredibly awkward and I don't understand anything he's talking about. I don't think any of the anti-dyack people really have a REASON to think negatively of him. It's just the way the wind is blowing so they jump on the bandwagon. I'm not sure this video will do anything to change that because it's so awkward that it comes off as defensive and cagey. He's trying to make a "reasoned" and strategic reply to what is essentially a high school popularity contest.

If he really wanted to fix any of this, he should make a small game and give it away for free. People would like him. The end. It's the game equivalent of baking everyone in your high school brownies if they vote for you.

But Silicon Knights have a history of over-promising and then blaming everyone but themselves on their failures. People are rightly skeptical where suggesting they are just bandwagoning ignores their actives that go all the way back to 2005~.

DO NOT TRUST THE CANADIANS!

Dyack and his creepy printouts, eh?

Six months ago I made a point of digging up those 1up podcasts where he laid into Mark McDonald. He really does sound like a crazy person.

I was honestly completely uninterested in Denis Dyack until Shadow of the Eternals came up a few weeks ago, I never played ED (even though I meant to do so for quite some time) or any of their games - so I had a pretty neutral stance. But I'm a bit annoyed at how nearly everybody on the Internet acts as if they've worked with Dyack for years when most of the research and information they have came from a single article that had only one side of the story and anonymous sources. I agree about the obvious perils of publicly talking shit about your former employer in the industry, but that doesn't make this article any better : these are serious allegations and there is no hard evidence.

Now, I'm unaware of the details regarding the 1UP or NeoGAF controversies that have been alluded to in this topic, but what I do know is that Dyack pulled a bunch of Molyneuxs on some of his projects and that he acted like an asshole regarding the poor crtitical reception of Too Human. Also, some of his games seem/are pretty bad. I'm fine with people not trusting Dyack based on this, these are verified facts. However, what we're currently seeing looks like some people, who had previously been severely disappointed by Dyack, read the article and just assumed all those terrible things were true because they fitted into their view of the guy. All of it spiraled into some weird mob-looking mentality plaguing comment threads everywhere with little know-it-alls looking down on Dyack when, again, all they've done is read a single article.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe his work ethics are terrifyingly bad, maybe he stole money from Activision and truly did bully his subordinates like Kotaku said. But do we really want to take the chance of assuming all of that to be true when a man's reputation and career is on the line? I mean, just picture his situation if all that was just lies and journalistic sensationalism. In doubt, I'm more comfortable with all this saying that I just don't know.

Fuck him, fuck his games, and fuck his company. That's all I'll say. The guy is two spots on the totem pole below a rancid piece of shit.

It has nothing to do with two terrible games that he released either, those can be avoided. It however has everything to do with him taking money from taxpayers with the provision to create jobs, but his massive ego got in the way and he thought he was big man on campus that'll take on Epic Games causing his studio to go broke and people to lose their jobs.

Just go away Dyack. Nobody wants you.

Can someone bring me up to speed on what the issue actually is? From someone who is just looking in, it just appears that a guy makes games and wants to try Kickstarter to make the next one. I have to be missing something. Is this guy just a douche and that never delivers?

I'm curious what Kotaku has to do with people not trusting him. Can someone fill me in? I thought the deal was he makes bad games which is why people don't trust him. (Including me, seriously I was so excited for Too Human)

@triple07:

@tycobb:

There you go.

http://kotaku.com/5955223/what-went-wrong-with-silicon-knights-x+men-destiny

@cosmokramer: Thanks. Definitely reading that article after work.

To @tycobb and @triple07: Kotaku ran this extensive piece in 2012 on how Dyack catastrophically mismanaged Silicon Knights in just about every way possible. If even a quarter of the allegations against him in this article are true, then Dyack is at best a bad businessman. For instance, it asserts that Eternal Darkness and MGS: Twin Snakes only came out as well as they did because Nintendo took such a hard stance to veto many of Dyack's decisions. The article further goes on to state that this is why Too Human and X-Men Destiny were as bad as they were, because nobody was there to keep Dyack's ego in check.

http://kotaku.com/5955223/what-went-wrong-with-silicon-knights-x+men-destiny

I don't trust Denis Dyack to make good games anymore, and I sure as hell don't trust Kotaku to have any journalistic standards anymore.

It's kind of a wash.

While Dyack's got a point that it's easy to point holes in an article that's dependent on anonymous accounts, one of the realities of being a journalist is that you have to protect your sources. Article 14 of the PCC guidelines, and why journalists have gone to prison after refusing to identify confidential sources. Sure, anyone writing for Kotaku isn't really liable to the PCC, but it stands to reason if you roll over on someone who asked to remain anonymous then you'll never get privileged information again.

I looked through that link and they don't "have to". It just a "...moral obligation to protect...". Just wanted to make that clear. All sources should be confidential (depending on the situation).

Goddamn. Justin is a national treasure.

@tycobb: Well yeah, we have a self-regulating press which is why they're guidelines as opposed to actual law and why The Sun disregards it every few months (this may end up going horribly wrong over the next few years). Even so, failure to protect your sources won't reflect well on your career at all.

He stumbles too frequently in composing his defence. Not to mention the fact that his defence was pretty weak. I understand: he can't disprove any of these allegations without being hit by a legal shitstorm, but this video does nothing for his cause (other than make him seem desperate to clean his slate).

In either case, words are wind. A solid game release will clean a lot of this filth from public consciousness.

I think all of this pathetic 'first world problem' banter stuff is just giving their crowdfunding game more publicity. I'll say one thing, Too Human was a freaking awesome concept and I hope Dennis Dyack goes on making games. I hear Eternal Darkness was also awesome.

@project343: True. Witness what Randy Pitchford recently got away with.

I've not even read the Kotaku post, but holy shut would I not trust anything from that company. Denis Dyack has made a name for him self making poor decisions and shitty games, why people would give him and any company that champions him money is beyond me.

Why did people give Richard Garriot $1.9m with his egotistical interviews and lack of a good product in the last ten years?