Epic released a press statement today to several larger news outlets, including Gamasutra, stating that Too Human developer Silicon Knights has filed a suit against Epic. The lawsuit stems from alleged abuses by Epic concerning the licensed Unreal Engine 3. According to Silicon Knights’ lawsuit, Epic, “Rather than provide support to Silicon Knights and [their] other many licensees of the Engine…intentionally and wrongfully has used the fees from those licenses to launch its own game to widespread commercial success while simultaneously sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games.”

The basis for this claim centers on Silicon Knights’ accusation that Epic failed to provide a functional iteration of Unreal Engine 3 to Silicon Knights within six months of the release of final Xbox 360 development kits, as stipulated in their contract with Epic. Silicon Knights claim that Epic failed to do this with both the 360 and the PS3.

Silicon Knights’ claims that they are not the only one that has been affected by this and that there are several other companies that have been mistreated as such by Epic. The suit alleges that these companies were affected as such in order to make Epic’s game look better than the other companies who were licensing their engine. Silicon Knights has claimed that this is the reason that they had such an infamously poor showing of Too Human at E3 2006.
Epic’s Vice President, Mark Rein, has stated that the claims in the suit are, “unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them.”

As indicated in the lawsuit, Silicon Knights have continued work on the project with their own engine since May of 2006, removing and replacing elements of UE3.

We’ll keep you updated as more news is made available.

Chufmoney

Too Human, an upcoming 360 epic from Silicon Knights, the guys that brought you Eternal Darkness, did not show up at this year’s E3. Sure, they did have a trailer that played, but there was no booth and no demo. A lot of people suspected this would occur, especially after the abysmal reception the game previously got at E3 and the reactions afterwards. However, it should not be taken completely negatively that the game didn’t show.

According to Denis Dyack, the big cheese behind the whole project, Too Human did not show beyond a trailer at this year’s E3 because they did not want to spare team members who are helping to finalize the game. A lot of us here at ESG have speculated about whether this game will even see a 2007 release for the first part of the planned trilogy; we have been quite skeptical. Despite how much I trust or distrust Dyack, if this proves to be true, then perhaps Too Human will indeed release this year. I know, your wallets are cringing at the thought.

GameDaily, who broke the story about the absence of Too Human, is waiting on an update from Microsoft about the release window for the title. Check there or here for updates as they are made available.

Chufmoney

Amidst his blanket calls for an end to all previews prior to a game’s completion, a demand that will never be met, a demand which is ridiculous and has rightly been ridiculed, and a demand that was apparently forgotten long enough to give one of EGM/1UP’s biggest competitors and exclusive hands on, it’s easy to miss some of the things Dyack had to say that do make sense, and are important.
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Look, there is no question that the Too Human demo at E3 2006 showed poorly. Whatever the reasons were that pushed it that way, it should not have been shown. EGM and 1up did the proper thing by critiquing what they saw. However, though Dennis Dyack may have come across as foolish because he wanted to abolish all previews (before a game was complete), I respected him for standing this ground.

Then he went and gave an extensive preview to IGN:

Dyack, just weeks after his now infamous argument with Mark Macdonald on the EGM Live Podcast, goes and does a full preview with IGN, their competitors. I understand that there are probably plenty of other forces at work, and that he may not have had that much say in giving this exclusive to IGN, but this seems incredibly hypocritical of him.

Too Human shows well and the preview does the game great justice. It made at least one more editor on our site decide that it was worthy of a pre-order, because there is an awesome preview of Too Human out there. I think this pretty much proves why previews exist.

I think the lesson to be learned from all of this is that previews, even negative ones, are not always a bad thing. If Too Human had showed amazingly at E3 2006 it would have got a great preview/review in the magazine and then it would have come out and been amazing and sold on its own merit. The shitty preview and all the press that has come since is going to work out in favor of the franchise. People are going to want to see how it is coming along and watch previews so that they can see how shitty it is. But, as the IGN preview shows, it is not shitty at all. People will then spread the hype about how good the game looks and how much it has come along since E3 2006.

Previews are a necessary part of the industry. They help build community hype for a product. Let’s hope we no longer have to hear anymore about aborting previews from the industry.

Chufmoney