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Epic Opens Counterclaim Against Silicon Knights
You may recall the recent announcement of Silicon Knights' suit against Epic over the Unreal engine. The Escapist reports that Epic is firing back, launching a countersuit against SK and claiming this is all just a ploy to renegotiate their licensing deal. "In its counter-suit, however, Epic says that Silicon Knights was aware that the Unreal Engine 3 was still under development when the licensing deal was signed, and that new features would continue to be added as part of Epic's development of Gears of War. 'SK's lawsuit is a pretense,' [Epic's Mark] Rein said in his statement. 'SK does not have any valid claims against Epic. SK filed suit in a bid to renegotiate the License Agreement, in the hope that Epic will prefer that to the burden of responding to discovery and associated adverse publicity.' Epic is seeking minimum compensatory damages in excess of $650,000, as well as other injunctive relief."
SK's original lawsuit is actually rather detailed: They lay out the case well and describe specific instances of Epic's breach of their agreement. I recommend actually reading SK's filing; it makes for interesting reading. The /. summaries are lacking in details, yes, but the linked articles/filings do provide a vast amount of detail. Try reading TFA next time.
Where are the other that are having such problems with the UnReal 3 engine? I know LOTS of other companies are using it, so how many are having such difficulties? Is this a case of one company, Silicon Knights, messing up big time and wanting their money back for their fuck up? Or is this a case of them being the only company to go public about how much UnReal 3 sucks donkey turds? I guess the courts will figure it out, but it just seems strange to me that Silicon Knights are the only ones bitching about UnReal 3, that I have heard of, and I read A LOT of on-line news sites. From Gamasutra to Gamespot(where I read about this story first actually) to GameDaily. No one else has said a word. Anyone here have links to any other stories about companies complaining about UnReal 3?
That is a little suspicious that every time an Epic vs SK story comes up, there is some AC that comes along and posts about how "very, very strong" the case is against Epic, without providing actual evidence?
I am really starting to wonder if perhaps an employee of SK isn't coming here and trying to push their side of the story. I just find it odd that while there are plenty of named posters who question what is happening, and none seem to be sure (since there seem to be next to no facts out there) there's always an AC with a fairly consistent writing style that comes in and says how fucked Epic is and how strong SK's claims are.
One would wonder why they would be unwilling to put some kind of identification to claims like that.