Silicon Knights -- the Canadian game developer as famous for not releasing Too Human as it is for the six previous games it released in the last fifteen years -- has decided to sue Epic Games for alleged breach of contract in SK's licensing of Epic's Unreal Engine 3.
Quotes from the suit? We got 'em:
Rather than provide support to Silicon Knights and Epic’s other many licensees of the Engine, Epic intentionally and wrongfully has used the fees from those licenses to launch its own game to widespread commercial success while simultaneously sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games.
Silicon Knights claims that Epic's actions have caused tremendous delays for their theoretically-upcoming title Too Human, and that as a result of the shoddy support behind the Unreal Engine, they've had to develop their own engine in-house. You may remember Too Human as a title originally slated for release on the Victrola platform in 1901, and most recently destined to land on Xbox 360 consoles.
It would be wildly unprofessional of me to take sides in this debate, but as Silicon Knights is the first group to come out with such allegations against Epic, and (SK prez) Dennis Dyack can't get an erection without listening to Joy Division's Closer and applying heavy eyeliner, I'm gonna have to side with Epic.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in, and Aaron Linde for waking my ass up with a phone call so that this story could happen]
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If a company like Midway can pull a good-looking Area 51 game out of their ass using the Unreal 3 Engine, then a company like Silicon Knights has no one to blame but themselves for turning lemonade into toilet water.
I disagree Will. Look at Rainbow Six. Clearly gimped, as well as all the other UE3 games, Mass Effect, Stranglehold, Bioshock, etc that have been delayed. The suit alleges that Epic sold their engine to all these Devs, but kept the full functionality for themselves in order to develop Gears as a showpiece.
What the hell happened to Silicon Knights this generation? They've gradually been losing face in the last year, before we know it they'll be junkies forced to go ass-to-ass for Keith David's amusement.
everyone is going to side with epic? i don't understand why.
if epic did not provide what they said they would then it is indeed breach of contract. like epic said the engine is continually evolving and the lawsuit claims they failed to provide the updated code to SK which in result their game was delayed. from what i read they are sueing for 75 thousand dollars. this doesn't look like a money grab move just a move to right a wrong. If what Silicon knights claims what happen has indeed happen then no doubt they will win this case hands down.
Actually FreQ have half the truth. Epic actually keep "full functionality" for Gears because they got a lot of tools from Microsoft that they got in exchange for making Gears exclusive. The plan was to get Sony, because of their cell chip. But Sony did not acted and Microsoft gave them all the needed libraries. Epic signed the deal and made the MS dependant Unreal Engine, reason why they have to recode everything for PS3. So they sold gimped copies of what they can run without the libraries and M$ wanting money or exclusives rights to the technology and implement it to Windows Vista. Then Silicon Knights located some libraries that are linked to many M$ libraries and were incomplete or badly coded. They said that they will be able to compile such engine and sell it for half the price so more obscure developers could buy it. Then a huge unicorn came to me, I mounted it, and got back to the stars.
Actually, Silicon Knights has a pretty strong case. Reading the suit, it's a fraud case, with Silicon Knights saying that Epic didn't deliver what it promised.
Having spoken with Mark Rein personally last week about the engine, I was told that when developers create additional content or features for the Unreal Engine that is their property. They can share it with others if they wish, but don't have to by any means.
So, it may be reasonable to expect Epic to create a base engine, and then fine-tune it further beyond what they're licensing out to create Unreal and Gears. It's just like what Capcom or Square would do, except Epic is the company behind the engine in the first place.
They're essentially saying "Heres the Unreal Engine, which is what we used to create Gears. So it is possible to do this," but a company like Silicon Knights expects the engine to magically churn out their game for them.
That's my uninformed take on the situation. I'd like to think Silicon Knights is a decent company behind a couple decent games, but from what I've heard about them and specifically their main man compared to what I personally know about Mark Rein and Epic, and I'm gonna have to side with Cliffy on this one.
Given the large number of delayed UE3 titles and the fact NONE OF THEM are even close to being Gears standard, despite supposedly running on an identical engine, I think it's pretty obvious that UE3 isn't quite up to snuff as a development tool.
Well, reading the suit, it does seem like Silicon Knights got a Gimped version of the Engine. Surely, they should be able to get something better than what they showed at E306 with just the base engine.
"33. Among the functionalities or “tools” typically provided by a game engine are: (1)
a rendering engine (or “renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics; (2), a physics engine for collision
detection; (3) sound; (4) scripting; (5) animation; (6) artificial intelligence; (7) networking; and
(8) a scene graph. That basic suite of tools is generally provided through an interactive interface
that allows individual developers to quickly and simply input data describing an action or object
in script without having to work in the more cumbersome underlying code."
"71. As mentioned above, when Gears of War showed so well at E3 and walked off
with Best Game honors from the show, Gears of War was ostensibly running the same engine as
Silicon Knights’ Too Human, even though the version that Silicon Knights had been provided
by Epic was nothing but problematic. The aspects of the two games that were clearly “engine
level” functions (load times, frame rates, multi-processor support, implementation, and multithreading,
to name only a few) performed radically better in Gears of War as displayed at E3
than in Silicon Knights’ own game. Similarly, at E3 the vast majority of all other developers
whom Epic had announced as “licensed users” of the Engine, showed only unplayable demos of
their games, and then only behind closed doors."
I don't see how Rainbow 6 is "clearly gimped." I sure as hell wouldn't throw the single player out of bed, and the trimmed down multiplayer functions quite well, which is much more important than looking super pretty. In terms of SK vs. Epic, Too Human has been delayed and reworked so many times, there's two very obvious scenarios for as to why they're bringing this up now. Super cuddly puppy scenario: They've been plagued with this problem since before the release of the xbox 360, but they decided to keep it to themselves for this long because they were willing to turn the other cheek. But now, when its officially reached an absurdly long development with nothing to show for it, they were finally forced to voice their problem. Thats that scenario. Now for the "everyone dies, including puppies" scenario: The inexcusably long development, seemingly due to the fact that the gameplay was terribly planned and the story felt completely uninspired, had gone on way to long without blaming anyone. Perhaps there's some truth to their claim, but they're blowing it out of proportion to save face and to get people's attention in hopes of resurrecting hope that this game will happend and will be awesome. I would love to believe the fun puppies scenario, and I'd be happy if ends up being true. But the beer mixed with shots of cynicism tells me that there's probably more of scenario 2 going on.
Is it really so hard to believe that the company that created the engine be the one to use it the most efficiently? That's all I'm saying.
No other companies are complaining. Do you think Square and Sega and everybody else in the industry would license an engine so frequently that is apparently plagued by so many problems?
I don't know what to make of this. Is it possible Epic is screwing its customers? Hell yeah it's possible, this is the world of glorious capitalism. It's also possible that Silicon Knights is whining. After all, Too Human is the game that looked like ass when it was first shown and the creator bitched and moaned that he was forced to show it too early. Seems to me that Too Human's development is all about excuses and buck-passing.
That's not to say Epic is a good or bad guy in this situation. There are like, a shitload of different possibilities here.
what? you mean there are shades of gray in the story?!? I NEED BLACK AND WHITE!!! tell me who i should side with, NOW!
THE FRENCH!
I'm with Nex on this one. Based on what I know right now about Epic and SK(Which is not nearly enough to have an opinion) I have to side with Epic. Not because I believe they can do no wrong but because I don't trust Dennis Dyack.
chibi zero picking sides because of popularity?
great reply jim made me laugh =D (no sarcasm)
the courts will decide who wronged who, but if the contract was not honored then i would certainly expect them to fight. its a contract and "webster defines it as binding document that is unbreakable, UBREAKABLE!!"
Holy Crap Jim...are the french suing Epic too?
Maybe Epic thought it would be funny to hand over a gimped version of the Unreal Engine to SK, and then when they effed it up even worse, they sue Epic.
Moral of the story: Both sides suck.
More like a case of Too Soon!
From everything I've read about this, mostly from Kotaku, I'm inclined to think SK is right. Apparently, Epic didn't deliver the engines they were supposed to by the deadlines set in their contracts, and SK is basing their case off of that.
It probably wasn't the intention of Epic to do this though, since it was cited in a few of the articles that Epic has relatively small development teams working on the two projects they have; Epic wasn't able to concentrate on the engines and tech support going out to other developers as they were devoting most of their resources to Gears and UnrealIII.
However, SK was making some other, pretty strange, claims about UE3 itself not working (not being able to render terrain?) that gave me some doubt, though it seems to fit with some of the problems other developers have been having that we've heard about. I'll have to wait and see if any other developers come forward with complaints, but it seems that SK has a strong case against Epic for now.
Syndicate01: It has nothing to do with popularity.I'm just going on what little I know. Which is that I don't like Dennis Dyack.
Can I do forced resizing with your BBCode, or is that disallowed?
Silicon Knights is from my hometown of St.Catharines, Ontario, and I know that these guys would'nt have done this unless they thought it warranted, so I am with them.
It would be wildly unprofessional for me to take sides in this debate, so I'll go ahead and take one.
Welcome to the punchline Ryro. We'll be serving beverages and snack cakes in the dining car shortly.
the issue i think thats key is if they can prove that Epic was unwilling to provide support for understandable programming errors. if they can prove that then there is some grounds for a case. i think saying that Epic intentionally made the Unreal engine incomplete until they fine tuned it to produce gears is a bit of a stretch but i'm sure its the easiest way for the case to actually generate a payout.
Alright, Canadian company is thinking with the American way: If you don't like something, sue!
those frenshies lol, they should have also added:
Sacre Bleu!
I already posted this in my own entry on the subject, but I can't rob you of this one:
I dont think that epic was purposely trying to sabotage silicon knights, but it does seem like they withheld the engine from them. I just hope that silicon knights isn't just immaturely whining.
Once you own the license to the UE, it is in your control and not Epics responsibility to make your game for you...That's up to your coders. You can't just purchase the license and than turn around and say,
"Oops, we actually don't know how to do what we are wanting with it, can we get our money back?"
- "Afraid not."
"Ah, man. Ok, will just sue you for lack of support."
- "Um, go ahead."
Also, by owning the license this does not mean that the developers of the engine need to give out their methods or workflow of how they make their games. Merely the engine and source they used to develop it.
Sili-con Knights = Fail.
From what I've read and heard from other developers, the engine Epic has sold has been very limited, and has been a pain to use. Silicon Knights might have a good case here.
Does anyone else see the humor in Silicon Knights suing someone over delayed software?
Promagnum, Silicon Knights is definitely a competent developer and I doubt they wanted Epic to code the game for them.
I think they merely wanted what they were promised at the promised time. How would you feel if you had a job to do, a job that costs over $10 million dollars, and the people who are supposed to deliver the materials for you to get the job done don't deliver for six months and even then don't deliver all the tools needed to properly use said materials.
Epic screwed their licensees, it's as simple as that. Documentation is key when programming, and it seems Epic didn't even have that available, even after Silicon had paid a premium for the then groundbreaking (or just broken) engine.
I would want to see the contract, and then see when and what was given to Knights, if Knights has tried to contact Epic about the problems, etc.
They may have made the engine, sold it and then spent the money and time on Gears. This seems possible if others are also having problems. But that could also mean Epic just sold the first shitty version of the engine and built on it later, while legal, this would be a dick move.
its not legal becuase the contract said they had to deliver more code at a later point and that later point was a specific date which epic missed.
I think the issue is that the UE3 engine seems to be only suited for "hallyway simulators" ala Gears of War and for the most part that is true. Rainbow Six: Vegas didn't look that great, nor did it play that great in my opinion. Unfortunately we don't have that much information to go on. Hell even PA seemed to think SK might actually have a case. I like Epic, they have some solid titles. Gears of War was an amazing title. I beat the thing 3 times in succession. UT is an okay series. Not sure if they're up to the task of engine maintaince when they have games to make. They're not a large company.
Beware id fanboy statements below
This might be the reason that quite a few people walked away from id's demo room looking quite happy as reported by N'Gai. It could prove to be a smart move to expand your technology offerings so you're not limited by what you currently have in your battle chest.
end fanboy
"Welcome to the punchline Ryro. We'll be serving beverages and snack cakes in the dining car shortly."
Best comment ever.