Enginewars: Epic Vs Silicon Knights
In matters of engines and licensing, the battle between Epic and engine code licensee Silicon Knights has heated up. On the one hand, Epic continues to demand to be able to examine Silicon Knights' code for their game Too Human to determine how much - if any - of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is used or remains therein. Silicon Knights, on the other hand, revealed that it initially paid Epic $750,000 for the license.
Usually the analysis for proprietary information in code is performed by outside experts, but Epic is asking to be able to perform that analysis itself - a move that, according to Silicon Knights, is both unnecessary and harmful.
Why harmful? Because although they licensed an engine from Epic, Silicon Knights claim to have much original coding and design work done on Too Human - including a camera system that's being prepared for a patent application. Giving Epic what it wants would essentially be allowing another company access to privileged information well before the release of the patent application.
Making things even more tangled, Silicon Knight say that Epic never delivered fully on its $750,000 payment, forcing Silicon Knights to spend 18 months creating their own proprietary source code. It gets messier, and while it's far too complicated for a layman like me to untangle, Epic certainly doesn't emerge smelling like a rose.
Epic, Silicon Knights Clash Over Access To Engine Code [Gamasutra]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany, Video Games on 25 January 2008
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: epic, legal action, silicon knights, unreal engine 3
I'm afraid we will never see a release of Too Human, they should stop this already!
Hasn't Epic proved several times over that the Unreal 3 engine works? Quite a few of last years biggest games use it. I'm not sure where they're going with this lawsuit.