A defunct Video Game studio that was based in St. Catharines, Ontario, founded by Denis Dyack in 1992.
The company started out working on strategy games for home computers, though their first major success would come in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain for the PlayStation, which was praised for its story and characters. The studio would break ties with publisher Crystal Dynamics in a legal feud over the game's sequel, but would manage to find a new partnership with Nintendo, who contracted the studio to exclusively create mature titles for their hardware after seeing their work on Blood Omen. This was also short-lived, however, and after two games — the first of which, Eternal Darkness, is often lauded as the studio's Magnum Opus — Silicon Knights ended the exclusivity deal due to being unimpressed with the technical specifications of the Wii.
In 2007, Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for selling them an unfinished and inferior version of the Unreal Engine 3, arguing that they were sabotaging competitors to prop up their own titles like Gears of War, and that Epic should relinquish all profits from the game as recompense. Epic then proceeded to sue them back; not only arguing that Silicon Knights knew that UE3 was in early development and that Epic may be unable to offer support for any issues that arose, but claiming that the proprietary engine Silicon Knight made after ditching UE3 actually used a significant amount of stolen UE3 code. In 2012, Epic won this case, and Silicon Knights was ordered to recall and destroy all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny at their own expense, delete the source code for both games (plus all games they had in development) and allow Epic Games access to their servers to ensure they actually did so, and pay $9 million in damages and legal fees. The financial hit was ultimately too much for the studio to recover from, and Silicon Knights had little choice but to file for bankruptcy in 2014.
Games by Silicon Knights:
- Cyber Empiresnote (Amiga, Atari ST, DOS; 1992)
- Fantasy Empires (1993, DOS)
- Dark Legions (DOS; 1994)
- The Horde (Sega Saturn; 1996)
- Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PlayStation, Microsoft Windows; 1996)
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Nintendo GameCube; 2002)
- Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GCN; 2004)
- Too Human (Xbox 360; 2008)
- X-Men: Destiny (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii; 2011)
