Epic Fires Back at Silicon Knights' Lawsuit

[Greg Tito]

Epic Fires Back at Silicon Knights' Lawsuit

Epic Games will be "fully vindicated" in the trial to determine whether it did not adequately support licensees of the Unreal Engine.

We reported today [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108891-Silicon-Knights-Keeps-Up-the-Fight-Against-Epic] that Too Human-maker Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack is excited to pursue his lawsuit against Epic Games for misleading its customers about what the Unreal Engine could do. Dyack claims that Epic provided sub-standard code while the company continued work on Gears of War. After both companies filed several motions to dismiss the others' claims, a judge has ruled that most of the evidence has merit and should be heard by a jury to decide. Dyack sees that as a victory - "We are very confident the jury will see the truth behind Epic's actions," he said. Epic Games has chosen to respond publicly to Dyack's comments by pointing out the ruling is in no way an indication of Epic's guilt, only that a judge ruled that a trial was necessary. It's a game company legal catfight!

"On March 24, 2011, the federal court in the lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic Games completed its ruling on the parties' summary judgment motions to dismiss each other's claims without a trial," the statement read. "Allowing those claims to move forward to a jury is not a ruling on their merits. The court simply concluded that the disputed evidence should be heard and resolved by the jury."

The statement also pointed out that the court ruled in favor of Epic on several claims. "The court entered judgment in favor of Epic on several claims, rejecting Silicon Knights' claims that it could cancel its license agreement, that Epic interfered with its contractual relationships with publishers, and that Epic has acted unjustly under the license."

Epic Games is just as sure as Silicon Knights that it will win the case when it is heard before a jury. "The court had previously rejected Silicon Knights' motion to summarily dismiss Epic's claims against it and upheld Epic's right to present all of its claims to a jury, including claims that Silicon Knights breached its license agreement, stole Epic's technology and infringed Epic's copyrights," the statement read.

"Epic remains confident that it will be fully vindicated at trial."

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[FlashHero]

Well...too human did suck...but i blame Silicon knights for a 30sec death animation. So yay...

 

[Qizx]

Well, one way to settle this case real fast is to give all of the jury a copy of Too Human to play.

After several hours of that horrific experience, it'll be a clear win in Epic's favor.

To be fair those several hours could all be summed up by a ****ing Valkyrie carrying off the corpse of the losing sides evidence.

 

[PunkRex]

AAAAaaaaarrrrgggh my head hurts, so Epic may or may not have sold Silicon Knights a dated bit of software when they had the advanced version in developement. Epics saying that its developing it as a co-release with Gears 3 but SK is saying thats bull... can you not check software before you buy it, like a trial run. Sounds like they were to eager to jump on the Unreal-wagon and didnt check their purcuse properly.

 

[jakko12345]

I can't possibly support silicone knights at all. Too Human made a lifelong enemy of that company

 

[gigastar]

Well, one way to settle this case real fast is to give all of the jury a copy of Too Human to play.

After several hours of that horrific experience, it'll be a clear win in Epic's favor.

This, oh so very very much.

Just to hammer the point home, enjoy a glimpse of the suffering for yourself.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

gosh, i actually loved too human. i think it would have been better as a more casual or (less serious) game, plus 4 player co op would have been nice, and yes the death sequence was too long and the same every time.

but other than that, the game had alot going for it, combat was fun, a little hack and slash mixed with strategy, story was, ok, the twist was good, and the characters and equipment were customizable.

yh good game, just needed more testing.



AS FOR THIS ARGUMENT
i hope silicon knights win, simply because i want them to make another game.
whereas i would like epic to just END gears of war after 3 and make some more innovative and fun games.

 

[tomvw]

Methinks Silicon Knights is full of it.
You don't hear Bioware (Mass Effect), Gearbox (Borderlands), Raven (Singularity) or Rocksteady (Batman:AA) complaining about UE3, and these companies have taken the engine in wildly different directions (FPS, RPG, Action). You'd think the big names would've complained sooner if there was bad support coming from Epic.

On a side-note, I did enjoy Too Human as a sort of hacky-slashy loot-heavy dungeon crawler, but whoever designed the control-scheme deserves a good beating (waggle the analog stick to swing your weapon, WTF).

 

[IAmTheVoid]

God dammit, SK. Stop being dicks, make a sequel to Eternal Darkness and bury Too Human forever. Sorted.

 

[SovietSecrets]

It will be a Epic victory.

 

[Danpascooch]

Considering how widespread Unreal is and that SK seems to be the ONLY one with a problem with how it's supported, I think epic is probably right here.

 

[Danpascooch]

Methinks Silicon Knights is full of it.
You don't hear Bioware (Mass Effect), Gearbox (Borderlands), Raven (Singularity) or Rocksteady (Batman:AA) complaining about UE3, and these companies have taken the engine in wildly different directions (FPS, RPG, Action). You'd think the big names would've complained sooner if there was bad support coming from Epic.

On a side-note, I did enjoy Too Human as a sort of hacky-slashy loot-heavy dungeon crawler, but whoever designed the control-scheme deserves a good beating (waggle the analog stick to swing your weapon, WTF).

My thoughts exactly, if this really is an issue, why only Silicon Knights? My guess is they just lack the expertise to use it properly, and are mistaking that for the problem with Unreal 3 itself.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

Someone needs to tell Silicon Knights to stop pouting; their game was horrible and that is their own fault. Would even using a future version of the Unreal engine stop Too Human from being a good idea turned sour? Unless the Unreal engine Epic was supposedly hiding has anti-shite coding, I doubt that the professed engine capabilities would do jack diddily.

 

[mjc0961]

I'm willing to bet that SK just went and bought a UE3 license without carefully reading what it can does and what Epic said they will update it to make it do, and then started having hissy fits when it didn't do what they wanted. UE3 is a very commonly used engine and you don't hear other developers having a cry and suing Epic. That, or it could do what they wanted, but they were too stupid to use it properly.

These are the people that thought making the player watch a 30 second unskippable animation every time they died, and then made sure you would die a lot because of crappy controls. So yeah, I think there are plenty of stupid people at SK, and that them being stupid is a reasonable explanation of their problems using UE3.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

It will be a Epic victory.

...for puns everywhere!

 

[Albino Boo]

I love it.

This thread is full of people going "hurr hurr TOO HUMAN sucks, SK fail at making games so they sue Epic".

That's not what the suit is about AT ALL.

"...evidence regarding the basic nature of the parties' businesses and the relationship between them establishes that Epic had a possible motive to deceive SK into entering into the licence Agreement in order to fund the development costs of its own games and delay the work of SK and other competing licensees on their video games. There is also Epic]?s admission in its counterclaim that it developed the [Unreal Engine 3] in conjunction with the development of its own game[/u] as part of its 'synergistic model' and not separately as it had led SK to believe."

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/03/this-is-going-to-be-epic-too-human-creators-gear-up-for-legal-war-with-shooter-giant/

This lawsuit is about EPIC possibly deciving other developer's and favouring their own projects while being negilgent in it's contractual obligations to a licensee.

TOO HUMAN, as terrible as it may be, doesn't even enter the arguement. It's superfluous.

Same goes for other developers that have had successful games using the same engine. It may be taken into account, but if there's any shred of evidence that EPIC did fail in it's obligations to SK, it'll be an SK win.

A minor win at that.

The U3 license did not include a service level agreement for support, if did they SK would being bringing a case for that rather than what they have done. The crux of the matter did Epic make a legitimate business decision when it chose to priorities its own projects or was that a deliberate attempt to sabotage a rival. Personally I think they just made business decision. However with there being a clear conflict of interest between selling the engine and developing their own games, not having a separate staff for the engine has laid them open to cases of this kind. Seeing that burden of proof is the balance of probabilities rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, I think the verdict is this case will come down to the rhetorical skills of the lawyers rather than any real point of law.