Silicon Knights Rejects Epic Counter-Suit 25
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."
Headline should read.. (Score:2, Informative)
"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.
Re:Summary incomprehensible (Score:4, Informative)
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.