epic games purchases reality engine!

[rockdude86]

just picked this up at http://www.planetunreal.com

EPIC GAMES PURCHASES REALITY ENGINE™ AND HIRES CHIEF ARCHITECT AND PRIMARY DEVELOPER, TIM JOHNSON

RALEIGH, May 12th, 2005 – Epic Games today announced that it has completed the purchase of the Reality Engine™ from Artificial Studios and hired its founder, and lead engine programmer, Tim Johnson. Tim will join the Unreal Engine 3 development team (effective immediately) and be part of Epic’s presence at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next week.

Epic has purchased the Reality Engine outright, including intellectual property rights, trademarks, and copyrights. Epic does not intend to continue sales, development, or support of the Reality Engine, but will review its technologies for inclusion into Unreal Engine 3. Developers who had purchased Reality Engine licenses prior to this sale will be offered upgrades to Unreal Engine 3 at significantly discounted prices, and should contact licensing@epicgames.com for more details.

"I am thrilled about joining the team at Epic Games" said Tim Johnson. "I’m a long-time fan of Unreal games and technology, and I am proud to be joining a company I consider to be a world leader in both game development and next generation middleware."

"We’re very excited to have Tim Johnson join Epic Games," said Epic founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney. "He brings six years of engine development experience to the Unreal Engine 3 development team, and he’s already brimming with ideas on how to improve our technology. Tim is a great fit for Epic – he clearly understands all sides of the licensing business, from engineering to customer support to business development. He will have a huge positive impact on our company and our engine licensees."

just WOW

[Zacker]

Seems like a wise purchase to me. Reality and Unreal3 are among the best of their class.

[DaanO]

I wonder if they didn't also want to buy out competition

[skdr]

Whoa this is awesome.

[sensee]

This is not awesome, this is fucked

That's the same thing microsoft used to do. "Hey there's competition, let's buy and kill it because we are a big fucking rich company"...

Developers who had purchased Reality Engine licenses prior to this sale will be offered upgrades to Unreal Engine 3 at significantly discounted prices

Being forced to buy the Unreal3 engine could be a death sentence to smaller developers like the Metronome team.

Now I kinda think that Epic actually sucks...

[KungFuSquirrel]

Hardly. No one is forcing the companies to upgrade, but for a project early in development it's a hell of an opportunity. Reality was technology for companies that couldn't afford the likes of something like Unreal; putting it in their grasp gives them a jump that they could have never had otherwise. On top of that, there is simply no way that Artificial could have kept up with the level of engine support available from Epic's staff.

Metronome is far enough along that it'd be foolish for them to do any sort of engine change. They logically won't take the UE3 upgrade and will ship with the technology they have.

I think this is a very good thing. Reality had some interesting stuff going for it, but without some really killer content to show in it, it'd be virtually impossible for them to have competed on a market level with id and Epic. Think of it (forgive me for using this analogy, but it's the best I can come up with )in the way that people view the D3 engine right now, for example - there's some excellent content being shown across all the titles, but because they're all fundamentally similar (sci-fi shooter), people immediately start making assumptions of engine limitations and back away from it.

The content shown for Reality was all pretty bleh for the most part, showing some impressive resolution but poor quality, which unfortunately was probably among the best they could do for publicity since more major companies would take UE3 or D3 or even just use their own tech. Metronome looks visually awesome, but it also looks like they trimmed down a lot of the high-end features, so it'd be very hard from that base to build enough interest to be a market force.

I figure everyone wins. People who couldn't afford UE3 now can, Tim Johnson is in a hell of a position, and Epic can offer that much more effort towards their next technology, the benefits of which come down to the general gaming population and other developers using the tech - which, with it's practically official middleware status on the next xbox, covers a hell of a lot of people.

[sensee]

I don't know exactly how much this is gonna affect to the metronome guys but now they lost the support for the engine and they are probably not happy about it.

In my opinion competition is the most important thing for the market and what Epic makes is monopolizing.

UE3 is a hell of an engine, but I'm affraid that in 1-2 years every second game is gonna look somehow like Unreal 3 just because it's using UE3.

I mean let's take a look at SWAT4. It's using a totaly diffrent style than Unreal, but you still see its roots, for example the crappy lighting.

[Lee3dee]

I see Epic being the Criterion (renderware) of next-gen engines. Because they have the technology and abilities to make a great engine, so why not let other companies who cannot afford their flagship product get something a little less with the same results

[csharp]

productive purchase if you ask from me

[TomWithTheWeather]

In my opinion competition is the most important thing for the market and what Epic makes is monopolizing.

One company buying another similar company isn't a monopoly. One company buy all the other similar companies is. I wouldn't be worried unless you start to see press releases saying, "Epic buys Renderware, Epic buys Doom, Epic buys Source, Epic buys Gamebryo, etc".

Epic still has plenty of competition.

[sensee]

It's not monopoly but it's a step in this direction. There is very few high-end engine competition indeed: Doom3 has no future because it's too limited in style, Source is a granny, Gamebryo is too weak, Cryengine is getting old, X-ray is too unknown at the moment, same for F.E.A.R.

For me Reality was the only real opponent to UE3. Let's face it, Epic bought Reality to get rid of competition.

...and of course Tim Johnson is happy about the deal, because now there is a ferrari in his garage or something like this :roll:

[Tequila]

Really didn't see this coming. Epic must have really seen something they liked in the Reality engine, and the addition of this tech guy can only strengthen the Unreal 3 engine.

[von*ferret]

buy out the competition

[kleinluka]

Jesus. you guys on crack or something?

It's normal that bigger companies buy smaller companies.

And this wasnt even hostile. The guy who created the reality engine got hired by Epic.

I don't see that as buying out the competition but as teaming up with the competition, giving them a chance to create something better that appeals to more developers and therefore benefiting the customer.

Valve hired the BitTorrent creator because he has tons of experience in the field they needed for Steam. Epic hired that guy (and probably some others who worked on the engine) because they too had a lot of knowledge that they could use on UE3.

I feel stupid even having to explain all this o_O

[von*ferret]

Just beacuse you buy competition doesn't mean its hostile