Epic Games gets slammed with lawsuit over Unreal Tournament

Raleigh (NC) - Silicon Knights is suing Epic Games over the Unreal Tournament engine, claiming a breach of contract caused significant damages to its upcoming game Too Human.

Silicon Knights requested to license Epic Games’s Unreal Tournament engine for the Xbox 360 shooter Too Human. Under the agreement, Epic was required to provide a working engine for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 within six months of having received the console development kits.

Silicon Knights claims it failed to meet that deadline. For E3 2006, it says it did not have a working engine for the Xbox 360, and thus was not able to show off Too Human. According to the lawsuit, this also caused delays and other expenses in the development of the game totaling millions of dollars.

Epic’s own Gears of War for the Xbox 360, which uses the Unreal Engine, was on full force at E3. Silicon Knights is accusing Epic of intentionally breaching its contract so Gears of War would receive more attention. It ended up being the fastest-selling Xbox 360 title when it launched in November 2006.

A working engine was not made available until around November 2006, alleges Silicon Knights, and even then offered no support to the developers. The lawsuit also claims that Epic still has not delivered the PS3 engine, which would have contractually been required by the end of February 2007.

The Unreal Engine is frequently licensed to third-party game developers and usually goes off without a hitch, but there was speculation that the engine didn’t always work properly with the Xbox 360.

The head of Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack, said this has been an ongoing battle with no resolution. "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," he said.

In response, Epic vice president Mark Rein sent out an official statement reading, "We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them."