Eternal Darkness successor may never be released

The makers of Shadow of the Eternals have confessed that the game is in danger of not making it to market.

The game currently stands at $115,304 on Kickstarter – that’s well short of its $1.35m goal with 18 days left to run. Precursor Games’ own crowdfunding efforts have raised an additional $157,390, meaning the studio has so far raised $272,614 from 4,704 backers.

In an AMA on Reddit, Precursor COO Shawn Jackson admitted that should the game’s crowdfunding efforts fail, it faces little prospect of ever being released.

Since we do not have any other source of funding, it is unlikely,” he said when asked if the game will be released should Kickstarter fall short. We will entertain all options to make this game a reality because we believe in this project. However, we can’t be sure a publisher will share our vision for interacting with the community during development or this would work in the traditional model.

If the project does not reach its goal on Kickstarter, we will refund all pledges made through PayPal on our own site.”

Jackson also again reiterated his faith in creative lead Denis Dyack – a figure whose inclusion in the project has been controversial to say the least.

We hired him because he’s a valuable asset to the team,” Jackson added. We intend to show people the real Denis Dyack through his interactions on the forums and videos. Denis has made many successful games and ran independent studio for over 20 years.

We didn’t anticipate a backlash because we actually know Denis as the person he is. We believe in Denis and with him focusing on creative, he is excelling at something that he loves.”

Jackson also defended Precursor from accusations that it is merely a vehicle through which Silicon Knights has escaped its debts.

We purchased the assets via an arms length transaction as many other ex-employees and companies did,” he insisted. A company selling assets during a downing sizing is a very common place and not illegal or underhanded in any way.”