CDN$3M Ontario Grant To Help Silicon Knights Add 80 Jobs, Become Publisher

A new, CDN$3 million grant from the Ontario government will help Silicon Knights expand from 97 to 177 employees and allow it to publish its own games, the company announced today. As reported by the St. Catherine's Standard, the new grant comes on top of roughly CDN$35 million that Silicon Knights and its partners have put into the studio in the last five years, and will help the company become "self sustaining," according to president Denis Dyack. Founded in 1992, Silicon Knights is perhaps best known for innovative Gamecube survival horror title Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The company's last release was 2008's Too Human, a much-hyped title that saw middling critical reception and disappointing sales. The company is currently working with Activision on X-men Destiny, an action/RPG project announced last year and currently targeted for a September release. Ontario's CDN$1.15 billion game development incentive program, started in 2008, has recently been used to provide CDN$2.5 million for an office expansion at London-based Darkness developer Digital Extremes, and nearly CDN$1 million for serious games development at Algoma University.