Round One has begun between Silicon Knights and Epic Games, as Silicon Knights who were previously reported to have dropped the Epic Engine for the XBOX 360 game Too Human, have filed a 54-page lawsuit against Epic Games over the Unreal Engine 3.

The lawsuit states that due to contractual breaches, they were foced to create their own game engine causing them [Silicon Kinights] to spend time and resources on creating it's engine rather than focusing on their games, which in turn also caused them to experiance considerable losses.

The licensing agreement in question, is the one between Silicon Knights and Epic Games which states that Silicon Knights would use Unreal Engine 3 exclusively in its Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3 games and advertise them as being powered by the technology. For Epic's part, it simply had to provide a working engine for the Xbox 360 and PS3 within six months of each system's final development kits being sent out, as well as continued support and updates.

The breech took place, when they recieved the XBOX 360 build of the engine not of March 2006 as they should have, but a full year after the release of the XBOX 360 console which meant that delays with the XBOX 360 version of Too Human were created as well as financial problems.

Furthermore, Silicon Knights also says that Epic withheld technology in order to promote their own game (Gears of War) which was displayed during E3 2006.

Epic Games fired off an e-mail to various press outlets this afternoon to address the suit. "This morning we were served with a lawsuit by Silicon Knights," wrote Epic Games president Mark Rein. "We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them. We'd love to tell you more about it but unfortunately our lawyers want us to save our comments for the courthouse so we're going to do our best to comply with their wishes. In that vein we'd appreciate if our friends in the industry and media would refrain from asking us about the suit because we're only going to say 'no comment.' We just wanted to share the news directly before the rumor mill starts churning."

"That advantage was nowhere more evident than at E3 2006, where Gears of War was awarded 'Best Game in Show' and garnered nothing but laudatory press," the suit reads. "By contrast, Silicon Knights--one of the only other developers to publicly display a playable demonstration of its game--saw Too Human roundly criticized in the videogame press for its technical problems and generally unpolished appearance. The damage to Silicon Knights caused by Epic's misconduct was manifest, because E3 attendees were able to compare Too Human with another game running ostensibly the same game engine, Gears of War, with vastly superior results."

The suit says that the new engine, which it simply refers to as "The Silicon Knights Engine," is built on Unreal as per the original agreement, but improves considerably on the technology. Furthermore, after the release of Too Human, all Epic code in the engine will be removed.

Krunal via uk.gamespot.com »