Troubled studio, Silicon Knights, has been stripped back to just five or so active employees, a report on Kotaku reveals (via VG247), including outspoken studio head, Denis Dyack.

The report, which outlines what exactly happened to a once celebrated studio and, more specifically, why their last game, X-Men Destiny, was such a flop was handled by Andrew McMillen, the same journalist who blew the lid off the scenario over at Team Bondi. It's a lengthy read, but outlines that internal direction from Dyack and other higher-ups was to spend less time and effort on their licensed project to focus on building a demo for Eternal Darkness 2 to get off the ground.

Another source recounts an anecdote from a different theater review. "The game was an unplayable disaster [in the review], but he got fixated on a static mesh of a non-interactive grey truck in the background. He gave the company a 20 minute lecture on the fact that he'd never buy a grey truck; he wanted it painted red." Accordingly, some SK employees sniggered behind their backs at Dyack: "We jokingly coined the phrase ‘paint the truck!' for other ridiculous, off-the-hip ‘executive orders' that sprang forth from Denis' mouth," says the same source. "Incidentally, I played the game after release... the truck is still grey."

The full feature outlines that Silicon Knights had an "essentially parasitic" relationship with publishers and that they split development of XMD with a demo for Eternal Darkness 2, a process that likely had a heavy impact on the final quality of X-Men Destiny. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in how games fail at the development level, but as McMillen points out early on, it is just one side of the story and information comes from completely anonymous sources.