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LAN Party Forums => General Discussion => Started by: Agent4054 on July 19, 2007, 09:12:22 PM
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(I can't start a thread in the news forums, so here it is)
Silikon Knights has filed a lawsuit against Epic Games. Gamasutra who has obtained the court documents that were filed in North Carolina has a lengthy synopsis (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14759).
The suit initially alleges that: "Rather than provide support to Silicon Knights and Epic’s other many licensees of the Engine, Epic intentionally and wrongfully has used the fees from those licenses to launch its own game to widespread commercial success while simultaneously sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games."
SiliconKnights has started to develop their own engine by starting with the code they were provided and slowly replacing the code they were given by Epic. Silicon Knights is asking for a ruling that includes:
(6) Silicon Knights owes no monetary or other obligations to Epic and/or any of its business partners associated with the agreement to license the Engine; (7) the game engine developed by Silicon Knights is totally independent of the Unreal Engine 3 and therefore is the sole property of Silicon Knights, or, alternatively, the game engine developed by Silicon Knights constitutes an “Enhancement” under the terms of the Agreement, and therefore is the sole property of Silicon Knights under the terms of that Agreement; and (8} Silicon Knights owes no obligations, financial or otherwise, to Epic in connection with and/or related to the Silicon Knights Engine.
The document then asks that "The Court award damages to Silicon Knights in an amount proved at trial for the damages as set forth above", and that "Epic be required to disgorge all profits obtained on its Gears of War game as a result of the misconduct set forth above."
O_o
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So, basically, they're claiming that Epic owes them money because Epic made a game superior to their own?
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Yeah that's it sounds like. Seems like they are complaining that Epic didn't give them the engine code they used to make Gears of War, instead of the engine code that Epic game ALL of it's licensees. Which doesn't make sense. Epic licenses out the base code for UE3. Companies like Irrational Games(who are making BioShock) added their own unique code and additions to the engine.
They are also whining because Epic used the money from the licenses to further develop their own games. I don't see what the big deal is there. It's Epics profits. Let them do what they want with it(unless they specifically mention in the contract they have to use the profits to further develop their engine).
While the main accusation is Epic not delivering the xbox360 SDK on time, which does seem somewhat viable, what they are asking in return is just weird.
Oh well. this will be a rather huge hit on the middleware business if SK does get something from this. All I can say is, Epic better not delay UT3 further because of this.