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]
Contest:
2:25 AM on 07.21.2007
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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.
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.
"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."
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?
That's not to say Epic is a good or bad guy in this situation. There are like, a shitload of different possibilities here.
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!!"
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.
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.
Sacre Bleu!
"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.
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.
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.
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
Best comment ever.