Silicon Knights sues Epic Games

    When you license an incomplete engine, you get incomplete code... That shouldn't shock anyone. Doesn't matter who you're licensing from.

    SK may have some merit in elements of the case, but I think once they started demanding that they receive the entirety of Epic's Gears of War profits in damages plus the ability to keep their version of the engine and all their modifications to it as their own property with no licensing costs, I think they crossed the line into ridiculousville.

    We'll see what happens I guess.

    Quote from KungFuSquirrel

    SK may have some merit in elements of the case, but I think once they started demanding that they receive the entirety of Epic's Gears of War profits in damages plus the ability to keep their version of the engine and all their modifications to it as their own property with no licensing costs, I think they crossed the line into ridiculousville.

    I mean I understand you're probably overstating it but where do you think thats inferred?

    What a mess :X

    additionally this is disgusting:

    "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."

    SK are fools if they think that the single and sole reason Gears of War was praised was because of the engine it was running on. What GoW did right run the fucking gambit from concept art to style to any number of non-Engine specific traits from sound to gameplay innovations to just shit like the chainsaw that were unique to the game. This passage seems to allege that had Too Human been running off the same build GoW was it would be equally lauded, which I think is patently laughable and shows you the bitterness and frankly crybaby mentality that summarizes this lawsuit from SK's perspective.

    I think its equal parts Epic got a bit of an edge with the code and SK are nowhere near as relevant or successful as Epic and are pointing an easy finger.

    Well, I mis-read the "receive all profit" part, but they do ask for Epic to give up the entirety of the profit they made on Gears of War. Check the PDF of the filing, page 52.

    IF AND ONLY IF* what Silicon Knights says about Epic in the suit is true then...

    I think Silicon Knights may have a case in terms of Epic misrepresenting themselves as being capable of providing the services they claimed they would. If it's true that Epic is only 75 people in the whole company, I would say that right there is a misrepresentation of their ability to handle their own middleware licensing. I would have thought Epic had that many people working on the engine and licensing alone, nevermind that many throughout the company.

    Epic had no less than 2 full games in production (and probably at least one more unannounced game) during the time period Silicon Knights is claiming in their suit...if they really only topped out at 75 people, that is fucking absurd.

    Now I know that Epic works with companies like Demiurge for example who handle a lot of the UDN stuff, but Epic shouldn't be contracting that stuff out to other companies who aren't 100% dedicated to dealing with issues that arise from engine licensing.

    If you look at id, they only really licensed out their tech to a handful of companies (Raven, HumanHead, etc.) and they were all doing FPS games so you could manage something like that while still maintaining a relatively small team like id does.

    I think the courts should look at the size of other prolific middleware houses (especially ones that also develop games as well e.g. Criterion/Renderware) and see what kind of staffing they have to support their clients. It's pretty hard to imagine Epic being able to support the vast number of issues that I'm sure cropped up amongst the legions of developers who licensed the tech with only 75 people total at the company.

    * My thoughts are only hypothetical depending on whether or not Silicon Knights is telling the truth!

    Quote from Bl1tz

    It's pretty hard to imagine Epic being able to support the vast number of issues that I'm sure cropped up amongst the legions of developers who licensed the tech with only 75 people total at the company.

    They did it with a whole lot less with Unreal 2 tech for half a decade. Seriously. They're talented, end of story on that. Anybody that tries to convince you that that a game studio must absolutely have 400 people to produce a next gen title is either lazy, lacking vision, or a combination of both.

    I've read the complaint and it's a mixed bag. Yeah, SK has some valid complaints. The problem is their valid complaints are fairly minor, and happen to be floating in a sea of wild accusations and crazy demands. It makes it harder to take the valid complaints seriously when they do that.

    UE3 isn't finished. Anybody developing on that knows it. Hell, it's even in the licensing agreement. We know what's in the pipeline for the next few months, and everybody just has to make judgments about what to do with their game. It is however shippable. As with any tech, it's going to get better and faster as time goes on and efficiencies are added. The same thing happened with UE2.

    SK's problems seem to stem from the fact that they can't seem to take responsibility for their product. It's not like E3 sneaks up on anybody. You know months ahead of time what engine build you'll be running off of and what you want to show. It's up to you to take care of your shit and get it running. If it's getting close to E3 and you don't think you can make your demo shine, then hack some features and cap a video at 30 fps so that you can at least show the promise you're going for. A good video with no demo trumps a shitty demo in most cases. There were a half dozen UE3 games running at the E3 in question, and SK seemed to be the only ones who fucked up. Furthermore, the fact that they had a bad E3 and then weren't able to rectify it for this year's E3 is just sad. At some point, somebody at SK needs to sit down and say "Wait, shouldn't we try to actually have a good E3 this year and wash away the bad taste from last year?"

    It will be interesting to see this play out. If it actually makes it to court, I have a feeling a lot of complaints will be thrown out during the discovery phase because it will be difficult to prove a lot of vague things like "perceived public relations damage" in a jury trial. It would be akin to somebody not winning an Oscar so they sue the Academy for damages. IT amounts to whining, and it's hard to press that case to a jury (if they had gone to a mediator or a judge instead of requesting a jury trial, this would be different).

    I agree fletch, I don't think Epic has anything to do with Too Human being a poorly recieved product at E3, the breach of contract element may be arguable but even then its within the confines of an industry where SK has been the only company to step up thus far.

    This is really looking like a save face for a poor product

    They aren't the only ones to complain though - Koei cite issues with UE3 as their reason for dropping/delaying/whatever they are now doing with Fatal Inertia on the PS3, and Phil Harrison from Sony also said that the engine does have troubles with the PS3. Not really related of course given that both of those are PS3 specific and Too Human is a 360 game, but figured it was worth mentioning.

    I don't know enough about the SK/Epic case to have an opinion on who is in the wrong TBH.

    If you have over a hundred clients, theres always someone who complains. The bigger you get, the more attention youll draw in. That includes negative stuff like this.

    Epic licensed the engine to a hundred developers, including some really big and powerful studios. If there really was a problem with the engine, Im sure those big studios wouldn't just keep their mouth shut. Yet, none of them complain except for a relatively little and pretty uknown studio who have been working on the same game for the past 8 years and just cant it out of the done...

    That isnt exactly great for credibility...

    Sure, but theres a difference between complaining, 'could-be-better' and outright sueing.

    Even if those three would hate it, thats still just 3 percent of their customers who are not satisfied. Not a whole lot.

    Quote from Hourences

    Epic licensed the engine to a hundred developers, including some really big and powerful studios [...] Yet, none of them complain except for a relatively little and pretty uknown studio

    Isn't a smaller studio more likely to be hard-hit by delays in delivering engine code?

    And I don't follow the logic that just because they were the only ones to make a major complaint and they are a small company that they don't have a case.

    'Nobody else complained' doesn't mean that SK didn't still get fucked over.

    Quote from Fletch

    Anybody that tries to convince you that that a game studio must absolutely have 400 people to produce a next gen title is either lazy, lacking vision, or a combination of both.

    I don't doubt Epic's talent -- they've proven themselves to be very very talented over the years. I'm not saying they need 400 people, but 75 people between two completely separate projects and all of their middleware support sounds like they really stretched themselves thin.

    Quote from ReNo

    They aren't the only ones to complain though - Koei cite issues with UE3 as their reason for dropping/delaying/whatever they are now doing with Fatal Inertia on the PS3, and Phil Harrison from Sony also said that the engine does have troubles with the PS3. Not really related of course given that both of those are PS3 specific and Too Human is a 360 game, but figured it was worth mentioning.

    I agree that the current usability of UE3 on the PS3 is suspect. A lot of that blame is on Sony's head, though. PS3 test kits were late in coming to almost every studio I know of, and they weren't exactly stable even when they were delivered. They're also the odd-man out when it comes to development. If you can get something running on the 360, it's not a huge jump to the PC.

    But again, none of that is SK's problem. If you've gotten to the point that the only way to salvage your game is to litigate, you've got some big issues to work out.

    Quote

    And I don't follow the logic that just because they were the only ones to make a major complaint and they are a small company that they don't have a case.'Nobody else complained' doesn't mean that SK didn't still get fucked over.

    Sure, the small studio may still have a case if they were to sue for something that only happened to them, but they arent. They are saying the engine isnt supported enough by Epic, no stable builds are out etc. Thats stuff that doesnt just affect them, but all other licensees as well. At best it is strange they are the only ones to actually complain about something so global?

    At the same time they have a development cycle close to Duke Nukem, sounds to me like they just cant handle their stuff and are looking for a scapegoat.

    And yes smaller studios are hit easier, but that brings us back to the original point: there are plenty of small studios who licensed the engine, yet none of them complains either.

    Probably more related to a lack of desire to burn money on court fees than a genuine lack of any dissatisfaction with Epic's support.

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