Engine “Justice”


I read on Develop Magazine this morning of some non-movement with the lawsuit brought against Epic by Silicon Knights. Seems we need reassuring that “something will happen”. From the article:

Denis Dyack has told Develop that he thinks ‘justice will be done’ in the still-in-progress legal spat between his studio Silicon Knights and Unreal Engine creator Epic Games. A year ago, Silicon Knights filed a suit against Epic saying the company had “failed to provide a working game engine” – the studio since then scrapped its use of Unreal Engine 3 and built its own in-house technology. The first game using that, Too Human, is due out next week.

Having used UE3 to build Grimm and spent considerable time in the past working with Id’s tools, I’ve followed this story with amazement. To expect a licensed engine, fresh out of the box, would require no modification or improvements to achieve development goals on a new title is ludicrous. But to build an entirely new engine as an alternative to improving an existing one – sounds a bit unreasonable. And to build that new engine inside 1 year, then ship a title with it? Now things are starting to sound surreal.

Will be interesting to see how this one plays out. My guess is that there’s more than a little UE3 still in “Too Human”.


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