Shadow of the Eternals

If you willingly give money to Dyack you are an idiot of proportions I can't quantify with text.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Hedonism Bot

Come on, that's being a little silly don't you think? The opportunity cost of $5 over the expected value of a new ED? You're going to say that concluding either way on that ROI is ineffably stupid?

I was hoping for more substantive responses.

Things that I'd been thinking about are the fact that Dyack is the chief creative officer. He's balanced by a CEO and a COO. All of the officers are going to be participating in the development of the game.

I don't know what the corporate structure was like at Silicon, but it sounded like Dyack had sole power there. This might address those problems.

The CEO has indicated that Nintendo's been supportive of the project, so it doesn't sound as if IP issues will be cropping up.

The idea of an episodic game is disturbing, but the retail price will be $5 per episode, which translates into $60 for a game. Going by their estimate of a 2-4 hour play time per episode, that seems like a fairly standard length adventure game.

From the company's perspective, I can see how crowdfunding the initial production costs followed by ongoing production costs is a much lower risk proposition. They are not committing as much capital up front, which, given the size of the company, is not surprising. Additionally, doing crowdfunding of ongoing production costs in the episodic format allows them to gauge continuing demand and adjust the product to the market.

The individual risk to the consumer is effectively the spread on the quality of the product and any donation over the retail price. These are fairly immaterial amounts of money. I mean, that's the whole point of crowd-funding these projects to begin with. The only part I'm sour about is that it's not actually equity, so I don't get a proportional share of profits for the risk that I am assuming, but whatever. Again it's immaterial.

I guess that's where I've landed. It's higher risk given Dyack, but there are potentially ameliorating controls in place, and the amount of money in question is insignificant, so why not? I don't need to min-max my cash flows.

And also, Diss, I agree that was pretty ridiculous.

This is problematic for a bunch of reasons.

You say Dyack will be balanced by a CEO and COO. Are you talking about Paul Caporicci? This guy? Who, according to his LinkedIn, was with SK during their entire legal dispute with Epic, while being promoted regularly? And stayed with them while the entire company collapsed underneath them?

SK had 5 (or less) employees as it worked to pay off the millions of dollars it owed Epic, after they had to destroy all outstanding copies of their stolen bullshit.

Their old COO disappeared. Even their IT manager got out. A software development studio without an IT head.

Who's left with Precursor? The CEO and COO you listed are two rehires (or never fired/laid off) lackeys of Dyack from the SK ages, who apparently were with him throughout the wholesale theft from Epic.

You think they'll "balance" his opinion? They are his underlings in everything but title.

What reasons do you have that you think SK could create something of even 1/10th of ED's quality again? The 'talent' on their meet the team page? Team | Precursor Games

Most of which describe their industry veteran creds as "Too Human" and "X-Men Destiny"?

Are you aware of how much money SK owes Epic? Are you certain that Dyack isn't going to repeat his blunders and fuck up something here too?

Yeah. That 5 dollars has an opportunity cost of a fucking delicious sandwich. I can buy the sandwich, and it'll be worth more to me as I'm enjoying delicious roast beef than any garbage this man can shit out.

Fuck that. Dyack gives all of Canada a bad name.

And his "oh man we'll take your money even if we don't hit the goal, I PROMISE TO GIVE REFUNDS IF IT SUCKS GUYS YOU CAN TOTALLY TAKE MY WORD ON IT" is some serious bullshit.

Trust me man, I love crowdfunding. But this guy is a shyster and a has been.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Fuckin' LOL

This gets better and better.

Dyack, famous for not giving any shits whatsoever, finally shows up on a fan message board that he's previously blocked his own employees from posting on, and leaves this:

Originally Posted by Dyack

Hi Everyone,

It has been a very long time. I am sorry I was away so long, it was not intended and I truly regret that I could not interact more with you all. I wanted to do so but it simply was not an option for me at the time. I really hope you can understand.

As most of you already probably have seen, I am no longer at Silicon Knights and I joined Precursor Games some time ago. I invite you all to join us at Precursor Games if you are so inclined. I will be interacting more there (our whole team will be - it is one of the principle pillars of the company) and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish with the community and our crowd sourcing campaigns.

I do see that some people are disappointed at the way things turned out, so was I and many others, believe me. However, rather then dwell on that, we are moving forward a positive direction that I hope you can also join.

Hope to see you at Precursor!

So, public confirmation he's not "with" SK anymore.

Which makes sense. It owes 9 million dollars in a lawsuit. I'd fucking bail out too.

People are not amused, follows up with dick sucking post here.

What does Wired find out?

Well...this.

Precursor bought the art assets for this half assed project from SK.

So let me get this straight.

Dyack's lackey, who was with SK for years, and then bailed/was 'fired'/went to start Precursor, bought art assets from a dead SK where Dyack 'no longer works', and then takes on Dyack as an advisor...to continue a project they have hinted at for years anyway?

Aka "let's secure some capital so we can pay off SK's massive fucking debt." Sure is deliberate and fucking obvious scam up in here.

edit:

Via the thread at neogaf, here's a twitter convo of ex SK employees.



This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Luckily, the world at large is likely to be spared of being subjected to such a thing.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

They also want you to pay 5000 dollars to work for them at E3.

I hope this fails and I hope Dyack drowns himself in a toilet.

I was speaking idiomatically.