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Denis Dyack goes into great deal explaining what happened with Silicon Knights and X-Men Destiny

by rawmeatcowboy
19 May 2013
GN Version 4.0

Why did it take so long to respond to the article?
- Dyack did not think that people would believe it
- He is now coming forward as it's impacting the fundraising campaign

Email from Andrew McMillen
- "There is no hard evidence apart from non-credible anonymous sources"
- Email from Andrew McMillen, which was forwarded to SK.
- Wired did not decide to go ahead with the story
- When McMillen was confronted with only having 8 anonymous sources, he said that it's fair enough
- Dyack: McMillen was aware that it would ruin SK and Dyack's reputation

Funds were diverted from X-Men Destiny to fund ED2 prototype
- SK put more money into X-Men Destiny than they received from Activision as they wanted it to be better than their last game
- Half way through the project, Dyack sat down with Activision executives and talked about how to improve the game after having paid 2 million more than they got paid
- Activision was stunned by this; they appreciated it and even told Dyack it was not a good business move
- Dyack sorry about how the game turned out
- Dyack also sorry about having said certain things in the past, he learnt his lesson and is now not involved in business decisions at Precursor
- Article says that 8 people totalling 45 years of experience were interviewed; Dyack says that people with only 5 years at SK would not know the budget allocation; those people who knew the allocation were not interviewed
- SK had open policy when working with partners; used Perforce and Hansoft; Activision could look at both databases and see which employee worked on what project
- External audits confirmed this

Allegation of why Silicon Knights left Nintendo
- Relationship between Dyack and Nintendo still close
- Iwata recommended that SK would become a second party
- Nintendo and SK went different ways because they wanted to create different types of games
- Nintendo were not oppressive but constructive

Allegation of claims that artists are a "dime a dozen"
- "Nothing could be further from the truth"
- Average salary 25000-30000$ higher than St.Catherines area and comparable to that at large publishers in larger cities
- People like Kevin Gordon would not work with him for over 20 years and many others stayed at SK for 10-15 years

Allegation of Activision demanding to know about staff leaving
- None of that was true, they did not feel out of the loop
- SK went through difficult time with layoffs and departures, but there was no exodus
- Turnover rate was low
- Former SK employees congratulated to Precursor campaign, Dyack does not believe this would have happened if they were treated poorly

Allegation of Activision changing the credits
- Dyack made the final call on credits, not Activision
- Allegation is untrue

Denis Closing Thoughts
- "I made a lot of mistakes"
- "I said a lot of things I should not have said"
- "Learnt my lesson"
- Focusses on creative design now

Check out even more details here