Silicon Knights Gears Up For Epic Lawsuit

Silicon Knights, the developer of Too Human (pictured here) has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Epic Games, creator of the Unreal Engine 3 and the Xbox 360’s 'killer app' Gears of War.

Silicon Knight’s lawsuit includes the submission:



Epic Games' VP Mark Rein is currently remaining pretty tight-lipped about the whole affair, but has said, "We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them."

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack claims, “We strongly believe that from the perspective of someone waiting for a game engine that Epic promised it would deliver almost two years ago, it seems pretty clear that Gears was built on the backs of the Unreal Engine licensees.

“We certainly stand by our allegations in the lawsuit that instead of using our licensing fees to develop and support the Unreal Engine 3, Epic used that money to build Gears.

“We have had extensive problems with the Unreal Engine 3 that Epic has been unwilling or unable to rectify. For more than a year, we have been trying to reach an agreement with Epic to resolve these issues without resorting to litigation, but were unable to come to reasonable terms with Epic.

“Regrettably, we are now forced to go to court in order to achieve satisfaction. We remain hopeful, however, that we can reach a reasonable business resolution with Epic at some point.”

Could the fact that Epic has announcement that its engine is going to be "be optimised for consoles" - and this announcement was fore-fronted at Sony's E3 keynote have anything to do with the case?

SPOnG has contacted Epic and Silicon Knights over in the U.S. and we will be bringing you updates on this news as soon as we hear back from both.

Too Human is scheduled for release sometime in 2008.