Too Human’s problems is Epic’s fault?
Today Silicon Knights, the development team behind the original Legacy of Kane, Eternal Darkness, and the upcoming Too Human title, has file a lawsuit against Epic games because of their Unreal 3 Engine. According to the suit they have failed to provide a working game engine which they paid over $75,000 for.
Silicon Knights claims that Gears of War used a superior version of the Unreal 3 with a half-assed copy sent to Silicon Knights amongst other developers. An adequate, working version of the engine was not made until Epic altered the engine for Gears of war, a version they failed to release to other license holders such as Silicon Knights. Furthermore the suit claims that, after Silicon Knights had numerous problems with the engine Epic games failed to fix the engine, and were unwilling to do so. They had tried, for a year’s time, to resolve the issue with Epic games, but because of Epic games they have had to indeed file a lawsuit.
Silicon Knights has since abandoned the Unreal 3 engine to develop their own engine for Too Human. The title is still tentatively scheduled for release later this year on the 360.
[via GameDaily]
Posted in Law of Games, Video Game Development, Video Games, Xbox 360
19. July 2007 at 6:27 pm :
Kind of explains why Too Human wasn’t shown off at E3. I can’t imagine that it’s possible for Too Human to ship this year…
19. July 2007 at 6:33 pm :
Well yeah, partially. They chose not to show it off at the E3 because they just felt it wasn’t ready for more public ridicule, this likely due to one of two reasons. The Unreal 3 engine still caused the frame rate issues and other problems that we saw at last year’s E3. The other possibility is that their newly built engine has a lot of bugs to work out before it’s ready for public appearance.
As for the release date, it’s hard to say. The title was mentioned at the MS press conference, which suggests that it’s planned to come out this year as the only title that was mentioned not to come out this year out of the shown 360 titles was Resident Evil 5… but yeah it doesn’t seem entirely possible.
20. July 2007 at 1:45 am :
I find it sad news, since the Unreal line of engines have been my favourites. They’re versatile, very moddable, kickass in general. I’m with Epic on this one.
20. July 2007 at 1:59 am :
[...] We brought you news of Silicon Knights throwing a lawsuit at Epic Games not long ago. To summarize, they claim that Epic gave them faulty versions of the Unreal Engine 3, that it does not do what it is said to do, that it has problems working on the PS3, that Epic did not help them figure out how to use the Unreal Engine 3 and that Epic stole their lunch money. [...]
20. July 2007 at 2:22 am :
Well then, it’s not just Silicon Knights. Koei’s having problems too. One can only wonder how long until companies like Capcom, EA, SquareEnix and Sega go forth and claim problems too.
9. August 2007 at 10:14 pm :
[...] One of the more popular topics doing the rounds these days in the games industry is that of the ensuing Epic Games - Silicon Knights legal war. To summarize, Silicon Knights claims that Epic gave them a faulty engine, while they used a better (but same version) of the engine to make their shiny Gears of War. Epic has declared war and claims that Silicon Knights is just bitching and that they haven’t even paid Epic. You can find the complete details here, in the Stuffwelike Archives. [...]