390°

Epic "defrauded" industry, alleges Dyack

via Eurogamer:

"Silicon Knights boss Denis Dyack has alleged that Epic "defrauded" an entire chunk of the games industry when promoting Unreal Engine 3.

He claims the four-year development period for Too Human was so long because Epic was misleading about what Unreal Engine 3 could accomplish.

"[Too Human has] been a four-year development cycle and it would have been out even quicker, but we had to re-write the engine because of all the Epic stuff," Dyack told Develop.

"The trial is proceeding; we feel really good about our claims, and we're hopeful that justice will be done. We all feel really strongly that they have defrauded us, and a major portion of the industry."

Silicon Knights took legal action against Epic Games in July 2007, accusing the company of failing to deliver development kits in a timely fashion, not providing enough support, and focusing too much on Gears of War.

Epic said there had been plenty of access to SDKs, and deflected attacks by claiming Silicon Knights had shown Unreal Engine 3 to unauthorised parties. Epic also claimed SK used the engine to make a game for SEGA, breaching the terms of the licensing deal."
Alternative Sources:
Epic "defrauded" ... - eurogamer.net | By: Cyrus365
SUP3R - contributor
Published: 494 days 6 hours ago | Interview | Xbox 360 | Industry News
 
 

Showing: 1 - 25 of 25 Comments
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titntin - 494 days 6 hours ago
1 -
I really don't have a lot of sympathy with Silicon Knights on this issue. There have a been a whole host of games developed with and released on the UT3 engine, and all those other developers have managed to craft fine games with it. This surely severely undermines their contentions?
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DJ - 494 days 5 hours ago
1.1 - Agreed.
Unreal Engine 3 was touted as an easy, modular engine to work with. It's never been advertised as something that pushes hardware to its limits, and there's key reasons many developers still choose to build their own engines when working on consoles.

It seems that the real issue seems to be with the staff at Silicon Knights and their inability to work with the Unreal Engine.
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Xi - 494 days 5 hours ago
1.2 - DJ i don't think you fully understand the situation.
Epic knowingly held back a working build of the engine so that gears of war would look better then anything else currently being developed at the time. This was a direct violation of their liscensing agreement.
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FantasyStar - 494 days 5 hours ago
1.3 - Hence the lawsuit.
Yuppers.
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Mr Bun - 494 days 5 hours ago
1.4 - @xi
That is the only argument for SK. The fact that no one else is claiming to have had issues is what looks bad for SK. But it would appear that Epic did stall SK so that Epic's game wouldn't have any competition (even though both games are different categories)

It will be interesting to see how the lawsuit plays out.
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Polluted - 494 days 4 hours ago
1.5 -
@Xi: I very much doubt if those allegations are true. The amount of money Epic makes off licensing fees for UE3 dwarfs any money they might make off selling a game so they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot by screwing over licensees.

Not only that, but they've always been confident enough in there own products that they wouldn't resort to underhanded tactics like that to get a leg up on the competition.

Also, business practices aside, do we really believe that they would be big enough jerks to do something like that? Say what you will about Mark Rein, but the fact is, he's a nice guy and he wouldn't knowingly mislead another dev. just to pad his own pockets. It's not like he's starving or anything.

I said below that I wouldn't take sides, but I guess I have now. Oops.
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DJ - 494 days 4 hours ago
1.6 - Epic would never risk intentionally screwing over its licensees.
And if it was a widespread issue, why is Silicon Knights the only developer openly complaining? For PS3 development, I would understand since the PS3 version of UE3 was behind the 360 version, but this is a 360 developer.

Gears of War, despite what Silicon Knights is claiming, is not a technically advanced title. If they truly expected to get that kind of graphical/technical fidelity with such huge environments and large numbers of enemies in Too Human, then it really is their fault.
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kevnb - 493 days 17 hours ago
1.7 - actually
most UE3 games Ive seen have sucked and/or had technical difficulties. Plenty of other companies have complained, especially at first when Epic wasn't on time with the engine. The really talented devs sucked it up and made things work for them, but the smaller teams like Silicon Knights seemed to choke. Hour of Victory is an example of UE3 gone horribly wrong. At the same time, I'm sure the lawyers would like both sides to shut up already.
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ThaGeNeCySt - 494 days 5 hours ago
2 -
Hey Denis... the developers at Bioware who crafted the best game of 2007 says hi.

Kevin Levine also says hi! =)
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DaKid - 494 days 5 hours ago
2.1 -
Yes
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cheese - 494 days 5 hours ago
2.2 -
After months and months of delays, and released with a plethora of technical issues. Mass Effect mainly, though BioShock is amazingly solid.

The problem here is that developers were perhaps misled as to the versatility of the engine. Too Human's quick transitions to a variety of scenes may have boded terrible for the title, because we all know how bad the texture pop-in is with UEIII, at least at the time.
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Whoooop - 494 days 5 hours ago
2.3 -
Hey Denis... the developers at Bioware who crafted the best game of 2007 FOR THE 360 says hi

Fixed...

:)
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deeznuts - 494 days 4 hours ago
2.4 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

That is a long list of games using UE3. Not all of them good, but not one lawsuit among them either.
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Polluted - 494 days 5 hours ago
3 -
I don't want to take sides, although I tend to lean more towards Epic's side of things, but regardless of who's right or wrong, Dyack needs to shut up and save this stuff for the court room.

He's turning a legitimate lawsuit into nothing more than a smear campaign against Epic.
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g3nkie - 494 days 5 hours ago
3.1 -
He just wants an excuse for why his game isn't leading up to the epic it was supposed to be.....
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kinggeoff - 494 days 5 hours ago
3.2 - blaster master
avatar wins
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MvmntInGrn - 494 days 5 hours ago
4 - Well to me....
He has been sounding whiny lately. Troubles or not Too Human is not being criticized for graphics or framerate, but for gameplay which isn't holding up.
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tplarkin7 - 494 days 1 hour ago
4.1 - He's a whiny commie.
Denis is an atheist that has strong communist tendencies. He embraces Quebec's government subsidies for game developers. Sorry Denis, I don't want to play "Marxist Brothers Utopian City" MMO.
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PimpHandStrong - 494 days 5 hours ago
5 - this is not 2flame
with this lawsuit and if toohuman flops in sales Dennis will be looking for a job

I have heard this guy speak more then once and the dude is long winded and full of himself! I do give him credit for his passion about the game but he is a douche when he gets talking for 2long

anyway

he does have a passion for games and thats never a bad thing
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Adamalicious - 494 days 4 hours ago
6 -
This is just an embarrassment. Blaming Epic because your game is mediocre? How about some personal responsibility. Lame. lame, lamer.
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Syronicus - 494 days 4 hours ago
7 - Despite what he thinks...
He says the UE3 was promoted to do more than it could but then he turns around and ships a game that can't turn up a decent, legit review above a 7... Come on, the game he is standing behind is a dud and he want's to place blame on somebody else to save face. He knew their game was not going to live up to the hype years ago and won't quit with the blame game...
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Johnny Cullen - 494 days 3 hours ago
7.1 - Agreed
He knows that Too Human will bomb.

Seriously, I hope it does too so he can shut the f**k up!

Bubbles for you Syronicus.
8 poopface1 | 494 days 2 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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Mao - 493 days 21 hours ago
9 - Uh-Boy
Damage control indeed. Mr. Dyack, I gave your game a fair shot up until the first wave of credible reviews came along. Defense like this doesn't make it more desirable to buy your game, it makes it harder. I'm supposed to have faith in an UNRELEASED product (tomorrow) you already have to defend from critics? Yikes.
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Itrguy001 - 491 days 5 hours ago
10 -
Can Dyack Shut Up for a few seconds dam hes complaning about this so what if he was set back by the UE3 Engine and Epic it still shouldn't matter he could have used a different engine
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