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Comments: 25 +-   Silicon Knights Rejects Epic Counter-Suit on Monday September 17 2007, @11:53AM

Posted by Zonk on Monday September 17 2007, @11:53AM
from the not-very-knightly dept.
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In response to Epic's counter-suit (a suit countering Silicon Knights' suit over the unreal engine), Silicon Knights has flatly denounced Epic's move and is calling for the suit to be summarily dismissed ... while simultaneously decrying Epic's motion to dismiss the original suit. This is going to get ugly. Next Gen reports: "Silicon Knights' response thoroughly picks apart a myriad of points brought about by the counterclaim. The firm stated, 'For Epic to attempt to dispute the merit of those allegations [of the original suit] under the auspices of a motion to dismiss is improper. Therefore, Epic's Motion to dismiss should be denied in its entirety, Epic should be ordered to answer the Complaint, and this case should proceed to discovery and trial.' The original suit arose in July, when Silicon Knights filed the suit against North Carolina's Epic Games, developer of Gears of War and creator and licensor of the development tool Unreal Engine 3. Silicon Knight said Epic didn't deliver on its UE3 promises, resulting in the delay of the unreleased UE3-powered Xbox 360 game Too Human."
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Silicon Knights Rejects Epic Counter-Suit 25 Comments More /

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  • Another Excuse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hansamurai (907719) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Monday September 17 2007, @12:02PM (#20638643) Homepage Journal
    I honestly think that Silicon Knights is just trying to find another reason why Too Human is almost as oft-delayed as Duke Nukem Forever. There have been plenty of games released now using the Unreal Engine 3, and they haven't had a problem with it, at least not one they felt needed to be brought public and to the courts.

    I used to be a fan of Silicon Knights and Denis Dyack (founder), but I can't say I am anymore. Though they haven't released an original game since 2002, it's hard to be a fan of a non-productive company.
    • Erm actually:

      All delayed games using UE3 Stranglehold, BioShock, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Turok, Frame City Killer, Fatal Inertia and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. All delayed.
      • And there are hundreds of games delayed that run proprietary engines, or another licensed one. I'm not saying there is or isn't a direct correlation between using UE3 and delayed games, I'm saying that SK simply has problems getting games out and I feel they're trying to place Epic as a scapegoat for their problems. Too Human was originally shown in 1999, development probably started in 1997 or 1998 (I don't know those specifics). The game was shelved while they assumably worked on Eternal Darkness and t
        • The Twin Snakes and (especially) Eternal Darkness were both very good reasons to shelve Too Human. Not that they really need a reason from what I've seen...
      • Delayed yes, but they were actually released. I think the OP was more referring to the fact that Too Human has been repeatedly delayed while new games were being announced and subsequently released.
      • I'll give you that. SK's site says they have ~120 employees. I don't want to make it sound like I hate SK or am an Epic fanboy, just throwing out alternative viewpoints that maybe not everyone wants to talk about generally.

        I enjoyed Eternal Darkness and the Metal Gear Solid remake, so I hope they successfully release Too Human and that it's a good game, not necessarily 9 years in the making good, but hopefully good enough so that people forget the litigation and remember the game.

    • Re:Another Excuse (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Aladrin (926209) on Monday September 17 2007, @12:23PM (#20639059)
      Actually, other companies have admitted to difficulties with the engine as well. None of the others claim that Epic is trying to sabotage them, though.

      In truth, any powerful engine is going to be difficult to work with, especially if it wasn't built in-house specifically for that project. There's a lot of cruft you have to learn to ignore, and there's a lot of workarounds to make the engine do things the way you think they should be done.

      I'm not saying Epic has no fault in this (they at least ignored SK's pleas for help), they aren't the evil empire that SK makes them out to be, either.
      • SK's claims of sabotage are unprovable, and really is a waste of the court's time. What is pertinent is whether or not Epic missed the promised 360-binary deadline. If they did, then this case is very clear-cut.
    • Twin Snakes came out in 2004.

  • Silicon Knights Rejects Epic Counter-Suit (Score:3, Funny)

    by Daimanta (1140543) on Monday September 17 2007, @12:04PM (#20638677) Journal
    I don't understand what's so epic about it...
  • from the "no-shit" dept.

    "Company getting counter-sued says it's not their fault"

    Seriously.. I don't get why this is news. Lawsuits are filed when there are disagreements that cannot be settled between parties. If SK responded to Epic's countersuit with "Oh, ok, you're right, we're wrong," then that would actually be newsworthy.

  • Can someone please correctly summarize this - like mentioning what the suit is about, and what the counter suit about, before talking about a motion to dismiss the counter-suit.

    • Re:Summary incomprehensible (Score:4, Informative)

      by LukeCage (1007133) on Monday September 17 2007, @03:11PM (#20642081)
      Basically it goes like this:

      Silicon Knights is making a game called Too Human. In order to streamline the development of Two Human, Silicon Knights decides to outsource the programming of the 3d engine. They look around and, based on both it's current and planned feature set, decide to use Epic's UT3 (Unreal Tournament 3) 3d engine. This becomes the "motor" of their game.

      At some later point, Silicon Knights runs into problems implementing certain things in the engine and making it work the way they want to. Their suit alleges that Epic did not help them with their problems and did not make good on their initial promises (which were features offered under contract, according to Silicon Knights). Instead, Silicon Knights is accusing Epic of withholding information and support so that Epic's own games would look awesome and use features of their UT3 engine that Silicon Knights did not have access to (or could not use).

      This supposed non-help cost Silicon Knights a lot of money because they eventually dropped UT3 and wrote their own engine, a major development expense.
  • Seriously - calling for the opponents claims to be dismissed isn't exciting - it's a damn near universal procedural step in the progress of a civil suit. If you don't file these motions in a timely manner than you lose the ability to raise them again later - say - after Epic fails to prove it's factual contentions.

    I'm tired and I'll get the details wrong if I try - but a nice similee would be - "coder debugs code."
    Yah - Okay.. and?

    Tearing appart the opponents claims line by line is - again - sort of what

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