Too Human dev sues Gears of War dev; the only winning move is to not play

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

what? you mean there are shades of gray in the story?!? I NEED BLACK AND WHITE!!! tell me who i should side with, NOW!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

those frenshies lol, they should have also added:

Sacre Bleu!

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Welcome to the punchline Ryro. We'll be serving beverages and snack cakes in the dining car shortly."

Best comment ever.