OK, I guess I will have to be the only one coming to the aid of Silicon Knights.
Lets look at Epic Games first. Epic is a studio that is supposed to have about 2 development teams, as well as a group to work on the engine. Problem: Epic is a company with only 75 people. 75 people for two development teams, and an engine team just doesn't work. In reality, Epic only has one real development and engine team, with a few guys working on down the road things, and others working on the engine. They are just not a big company.
Gears of War, which was supposed to have used the same engine as Too Human and all the other UE3 games, was using a more up to date engine than was available for the licensees of the engine at E3 2006. Epic had failed to deliver on their contract to deliver the 360 build and the PS3 build at the time stated. Normally in contracts, there are penalties for this conduct.
Silicon Knights is a company roughly twice the size of Epic with 140 employees, though from their development projects you would never know it. They sound like they were working on a PS3 project, and due to the excessive delay of the UE3 engine delivery time, have had to either A) abandon that project B) adapt the new engine that they replaced UE3 for 360 to this project.
The reason that SK named the profits for GoW as what they wanted is because that is the maximum amount that the judge can give in case of victory. If they named a lower price, the damages that they could be awarded would be limited to what they named. This is standard legal practice, its not something absurd or uncommon.
Ssj12: Read the claim. Part of the issue at present is that Epic did not provide adequate support. If Epic had been willing, or staffed enough as it were, this claim would probably not have occurred.
IllegalPaladin: Its called picking your battles. Epic has usually been consistent with their development, and have usually been good to developers, so they aren't willing to be dragged into a costly court battle for what they will likely see as no benefit even if they win. A big victory for SK would most likely put Epic out of business, and a loss will pretty much end any business alliance that they would have had with Epic. Its a tough situation for anyone involved.
What is more telling for their comments is that they agree that Epic took way too long to deliver their engine. As of now, it sounds like that Epic screwed up with their engine, and did indeed divert resources to GoW at the detriment of the engine development as a whole, and have tried to keep most of their partners satisfied since that time. With SK, they had gotten so fed up with the delays that by the time Epic got around to this, SK was already in the process of developing their own engine.
The lawsuit probably stems from the fact that SK was already in a tough spot this year. They needed to have this game get out this year for profitability sakes, and to boost their chances of turning a profit on this game at all, have brought the lawsuit either in hopes of A) forcing Epic to settle, or B) get enough out of a victory to turn a large enough profit to support the company.
"Suck on it" -vgchartz mod
