Epic vs. Silicon Knights
July 25, 2007, by Erlog On July 19th, Silicon Knights, developers of the upcoming Xbox360 title Too Human, filed a lawsuit in North Carolina court suing Epic Games, developers of the Unreal Engine, for breach of contract. Since that time, the internet has exploded with a whole bunch of ridiculous fanboy grandstanding and arguments over the suit’s legitimacy. Well, I’m here to tell you that Epic is clearly in the wrong if even some of the accusations made in the suit are correct.
Let me preface by saying, I’m not a fanboy. The last Unreal game I played was Unreal Tournament nearly 8 years ago. I don’t own an Xbox360, and have had minimal time playing Gears of War or anything else by Epic since. However, I’m not a Silicon Knights fanboy either. While I have played more of their games than of Epic’s, I still had to look up who they were on Wikipedia to know why this lawsuit was important enough to warrant bitching and moaning about on the internet. So, I believe myself to be in a position of neutrality on this issue.
Honestly, I am as neutral as they come
Epic fanboys might not like it, but it appears as though they have treated the licensees of the Unreal Engine differently than they have treated fans and purchasers of their video games. Epic does have a long track record of keeping up with substantial patches, updates, and new content for their games years after their release, but this doesn’t make up for any wrongdoing they may have done to their business partners. It just makes it really sad to see a company with a good reputation take a well-deserved hit.
And, this hit is well-deserved. If you pare the suit down to its essentials (minus the lawyering bullshit) Epic has breached their contract with Silicon Knights. Epic promised, by contract, that they would give Silicon Knights finalized release-worthy engines in specific timeframes: March ‘06 for Xbox360 and February ‘07 for Playstation 3. Both of these deadlines, the Xbox360 most egregiously, failed to be met by Epic. This is a clear breach of the contract Epic had with Silicon Knights. There isn’t any way around that because there doesn’t exist any method for releasing a game sans engine. I think that people have missed these important facts amongst the rest of normal slippery lawyer case-building. The rest of the suit alleges that Epic signed Silicon Knights on as a licensee to raise money to build their games, and because Silicon Knights’ own game development suffered, for this reason they should be granted a piece of the profits from Epic’s Gears of War.
While this does seem to go a little far, it is hard to blame them. A person or company would be foolish to not go as far as possible in court to get what they want. Otherwise, they might get nothing. At least in this case with Silicon Knights there is a leg to stand on with the contract breaches outlined above. Any other judgments awarded in their favor will be considered a bonus. This is, unfortunately, how suing works in the United States. This is why it’s hard to fault Silicon Knights. They’re just playing the game.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
At this point, it is unclear whether or not other companies also had a situation like this with Epic, but I would like to venture a hypothesis. Too Human has been in development for longer than a lot of other games. This means that they may have licensed Unreal Engine 3 at a time when other companies were still signing on to Unreal Engine 2 for their shorter-term projects. This means that Silicon Knights might be in a semi-unique position as an early adopter of the engine. Other companies might have signed on to the engine later and with different, more realistic, timeframes written into their contracts. I can see how Epic might have a tough time gauging how long developing the engine might take if they had started taking on licensees earlier than they should have. It could well be that we don’t see other companies jumping on this bandwagon. This might be an isolated incident between Silicon Knights and Epic.
In closing, it’s incredibly easy in cases like this to get wrapped up in how we might feel about a particular side. And who knows, maybe Silicon Knights are incredible assholes for suing, but we can’t toss out the truth just because it comes from a source we might not like. We just have to wait and see how this pans out before we start attributing feelings and emotions to the game companies we’re whining about on the internet.
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