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Silicon Knights sues Epic News
Xbox 360 News by Games Industry.biz
Developer Silicon Knights has filed a breach of contract lawsuit in North Carolina against Epic Games, GamesIndustry.biz reports.
Epic's Mark Rein notified the media of the pending legal action this afternoon but declined to give specifics, saying only: "We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them."
According to Gamasutra, the lawsuit alleges that Epic failed to provide Silicon Knights, a licensee of Epic's Unreal game engine, with a final development kit in a timely fashion. The lawsuit further alleges that Epic failed to provide Silicon Knights with support, instead concentrating on completing its own games, specifically Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007.
Silicon Knights had licensed the Unreal Engine 3 for use in its upcoming Xbox 360 title, Too Human. The game was notably absent from this year's E3.
According to the legal documents, Silicon Knights was forced to write its own game engine last year after the delay.
Sue sue surely you read GamesIndustry.biz by now? It's ace.
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Comments: 1-27 of 27 in total
Poster
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"Uh oh. So that explains why Too Human looks like someone took a crap in your LCD screen. "
Once again LeD maybe you should just for once bother reading the lawsuit. Companies are angry at Epic for not providing (enough) support and keeping features out of the engine provided. Maybe this is why PS3 Unreal Engine games can't get a framerate above 10? See? Trolling is easier. RTFM. "the culture of litigation in the States" They are Canadian ;)
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 20/07/07 @ 09:22
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Bill_Gates_Bitch
20/07/07 @ 08:31
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What a whining cry-baby. Mass Effect looks 'Epic' using the UE3 engine, so what's up with Too Human? He needs to look at his own doorstep first.
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LeD: "Dizzy: how does that invalidate my point?"
It doesn't. That said, the version shown at E3 this year is not running on the Unreal engine, but rather their own engine. And yes, it looks very poor indeed. However, that comes less from what the engine is capable of (just as the previous showings on the Unreal engine) and more from the poor animation, texture work and lighting setups. |
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PlugMonkey
20/07/07 @ 08:55
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"What a whining cry-baby. Mass Effect looks 'Epic' using the UE3 engine, so what's up with Too Human? He needs to look at his own doorstep first."
Before you made that comment, did it occur to you that you know precisely 3/5s of fuck all about the relationships between the three companies? Or can you provide evidence that Bioware and Silicon Knights received equal support from Epic? |
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Maybe SK should just give up on Too Human, I just don't see this game ever coming out or it wont be any good if it does. That really why they are sueing Epic, it's an attempt to reduce their loses.
If they win the court case chances are they'll can Too Human, change their name and do something new. |
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Sadly have to agree with Silicon Knights on this. I did tell you guys that Cliffy B and Mark were annyong ego trip maniacs who were hell to talk to and work with. I know thanks to GOW none of you actually believed that. Guess now I'm vindicated.
They tended to fob everyone off while promoting (even to us third party developers) the Gears game. One of the calssics I had was "It's on the dev website if you look!" To which I replied "I did look that's why I've been forced to call you!". The prat at the other end of the phone then reluctantly offered assistance for my problem. I guess success has gone to their heads. I also suspect that a lot of companies will be reluctant to use UE in the future due to this. I know I'm not going to be showing too much enthusiasm if the next game I work on is UE based. |
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More info:
"The thrust of the complaint seems centered around E3 2006, where Too Human was demonstrated and subsequently criticized for, as the lawsuit describes, "technical problems and generally unpolished appearance." Silicon claims that Epic withheld a "very useable version" of the Xbox 360 engine for its own purposes, only delivering a fully functional version of the software in November of that year--roughly eight months past the original March 2006 deadline. Silicon seeks several concessions from their licensor, including a negation of the original licensing agreement, the unrestricted legal right to alter the engine, and, most significantly, ***forfiture of all profits gained through sales of Epic's Gears of War to Silicon Knights in the form of awarded damages***." http://www.shacknews.com/ |
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...and maybe related info:
"The PS3 version of Fatal Intertia has been delayed due to "difficulties" with the Unreal Engine's performance on the Sony hardware. The game was originally designed specifically for the system, yet is deemed to be "not running well enough" according to a Koei representative. The Xbox 360 version is to be released ahead of it, as delaying it further while the PS3 version is fixed wasn't deemed necessary" http://www.gamesradar.com/us/ps3/game/ne... |
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somehow,i feel Microsoft maybe behind Silicon Knights on this...
anyone who thinks microsoft is on good terms with Epic because of Gears of war is deeply mistaken,and MS has more than enough reasons to try and hit Epic its very likely MS directed Silicon Knights to start the lawsuit,MS already did something similar in the OS market ,by Backing SCO against IBM and threating to sue linux users,they are very likely to direct Silicon Knight to start the lawsuit against Epic as of why would Microsoft direct silicon Knights to do this,they have more than enough reason simplfied by the following: -Epic refused to make UT3 Vista only,thus crumbling Microsofts efforts to force people into vista,the game will be available for xp -not only that..even worse for microsoft that UT3 will be available for the MAC OS and possibly even Linux,this is a huge blow to MS "force people into Vista plan"...people are no longer forced to go to Vista to play one of the best PC multi-player game [the most widely MOD supported],they can get it on their MAC and linux -Even worse...Epic refused to make the game use the "Games for windows Live" the MS service equivalent to live in which you have to Pay fees to get online play on PC [another attempt to milk consumers even in the always free pc online gaming department] as mark rein already said the game will have its own Free PC online experience and wont use "Windows Live" http://ps3.ign.com/articles/806/806613p1... "UT3 does not use Games for Windows LIVE. We have not decided about cross platform play between PC and PS3," Mark rein -Even worse for microsoft Epic annouced a deal to optimize and improve the Unreal Engine 3 performance on the PS3,with UT3 the biggest and best Mulit-player FPS been exclusive to the system for over 6 months if not more with full Mod support,a huge blow to the 360 which is currently in its worse moment Microsoft Monopoly is in a very bad position,between the crap Vista and Linux already becoming more adopted and streamlined to the public for FREE [and worse people are actually starting to embrace Linux and discovered that all the myths of it been hard is BS],their monopoly schemes of forcing people is failing and Epic is contributing to this failure,they are driving the gaming development against MS monoply interest,they offered UT3 and UE3 for all platforms,and they licensed the engine to so many developers,Epic is getting much more control in the gaming development market,this threatens Microsoft MS monopolist ideology cannot allow such a threat to exist,it has to hunt them down like it always did in the OS market from forcing OEM PC manufacturers to use windows only,to threating Linux users its very logical for them to support Silicon knight,they need to put some pressure on Epic and stop their growth hopefuly,Epic will continue regardless of MS tries....we need this open competiton enviroment that epic is doing Just imagine MS alone in gaming industry....
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most recently on 20/07/07 @ 16:30
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"Rainbow Six Vegas must be some sort of miracle then, since Ubi released that very close to GoW. "
Doesn't R6 Vegas use a variant of UE2? (that what the box seems to imply) http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image... |
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Madlax thats quite a consipiracy you have there... MS dont do game engines they do tools(better than their rivals and good thing for the console industry if it raises the bar and helps devs do their work better), UE3 was never going to be exclusive to any platform MS werent even attempting that(because its just not likely is it?), it already ran fine on 360 in comparison to the PS3 from day one from the looks of it(although this news suggests it still takes alot effort to get started).
Now back on topic, having to stop work and start on your own engine would have been a real set back and a headache for all involved. I do like that they have done it though because: 1) Its another native 360 engine(which other devs can learn from hopefully), so you can be sure it makes the best use of the hardware(well not 100% yet but I have faith in the Silicon Knights teams ability to do so) 2) Theres so many games based off UE3 that its hard to distinguish games these days, 360 games built on native engines(and likewise for similar scenarios on other platforms) should have their own look/flavour if it makes best use of its strengths that is. 3) Not sure how true this is but theres alot of suggestions that Epic are getting too big for their own boots after the success theyve seen with it so far = not a good thing for the industry.
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most recently on 20/07/07 @ 21:25
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@bystander
It's not UEngine2, it's based on the UEngine2 but heavly modified (the same as Bioshock). R6: Vegas uses the UEngine modified to a point that does many things similiar to UEngine 3 from what I understood (read quite a few articles online about this)... Bioshock uses an evolution of the "Vengeance Engine" that was based on the UEngine2, them it was modified for SWAT 4, and now it was even more modified to a point that is very similiar to UEngine 3. |
Comments: 1-27 of 27 in total
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