Silicon Knights Sues Epic Because of Unworking UE3
The renown next-gen Unreal Engine 3 might not be reaching it’s full potential because of a monopoly that Epic has been trying to run on it. Silicon Knights,the developer for the upcoming 360 title Too Human have sued Epic, claiming that Epic focused on making Gears of War a success and neglected to support other developers with their own UE3 based games.
“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.”
Apparently, part of the agreement states that Epic was obligated to provide a “functional Engine” for the 360, March 2006, six months after the development kits for the Xbox 360 were made available on September ‘05. Silicon Knights says that funding for Too Human would have been pulled if the project didn’t have a working engine, so they resorted to creating their own “Silicon Knights Engine”. This is why Too Human was delayed.
Silicon Knights also blames the defective Engine for the poor E3 2006 demo of Too Human.
“That advantage was nowhere more evident than at E3 2006, where Gears of War was awarded “Best Game in Show” and garnered nothing but laudatory press. By contrast, Silicon Knights – one of the only other [Unreal Engine 3] developers to publicly display a playable demonstration of its game – saw Too Human roundly criticized in the videogame press for its technical problems and generally unpolished appearance. The damage to Silicon Knights caused by Epic’s misconduct was manifest, because E3 attendees were able to compare Too Human with another game running ostensibly the same game engine, Gears of War, with vastly superior results.”]
July 20th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
[...] (more…) [...]
July 20th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Actually from what I’ve seen of “Too Human” the animation is the worst I’ve seen in a Xbox 360 game to date. Animation has nothing to do with what engine is used and everything to do with the abilities of the animators on the team.
If the animation is anything to go by then the rest of the team won’t be able to create a game which looks as good as GoW.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
plus i dont understand are they suing them because of epic using the funds that were suposed to b shared or are they suing them becuase they know how to use the ue3 and are not telling silicon nights how to fully use it. im confused? ok i have a question what game does everyone think has the best graphics(specify which system)?
July 20th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
obviously we don’t know the full story here
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:09 am
It is pretty simple … they are claiming that Epic did not give them the FINAL version of the UE3 SDK on time (in fact they still don’t have some of what Epic was slated to have delivered by now) … the one Epic used themselves on Gears. And if that is indeed the case (and when I look at games like Hour of Victory, R6V, and Monster Madness … the only other released games using the UE3 I definitely see a major difference in the quality, and no roboblitz doesn’t count) then Epic is definitely guilty of not providing what it was obligated to do contractually.
I think the best thing to do is wait and see … let’s not jump down SK just yet. At least not until Stranglehold and Bioshock come out and we can compare those UE3 games to Gears on the visual front. That will be very telling … especially Bioshock which is not a Midway or MS published game.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:41 am
Where have u been Anuban? Also, I kinda agree. They sound to much like cry babies in this one. An engine is only good as what a developer can do with it. Look at prey, some say its looks identical to doom. But, I disagree! They did a great job with DOOMS engine.
If it was such a problem lol build ur own engine
August 10th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
[...] may remember a while ago that Silicon Knights sued Epic for providing Silicon Knights, and other developers, a model of the Unreal Engine 3 that was [...]
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
[...] you may or may not know, Digital Battle has been following the legal battle between Silicon Knights and Epic for a while now. Epic has tried to play cool and [...]