While Silicon Knights had made some serious headway in their case agains Epic Games regarding the failure of Too Human and how it relates to the Unreal Engine, it looks Epic Games has conversely scored a “win” of their own. In the case, which was approved for trial early last year, one expert witness’s testimony has been thrown out for reasons that the courts nor Silicon Knights will reveal.
There is however, still a ton of evidence – from witness testimonies to official documents – that Silicon Knights have working in their favor. Testimony aside, Epic Games looks to have an uphill battle ahead of them as they are tried for Fraud, Unfair Competition, Deceptive Trade Practices, Breach of Warranty, and Breach of Contract.
For those who might not be familiar with the case, it essentially comes down to Silicon Knights blaming Epic Games for a large part of the failures in Too Human. SK claims that Epic held back certain parts of the Unreal Engine – failing to deliver regular updates and whatnot – but were still collecting licensing fees in order to fund development on what was to become Gears of War. Epic was ostensibly ensuring the success of their product, but, as Silicon Knights claims, they were letting other projects flounder under antequated technology.
The case has been officially approved for trial, but is only just getting started. Considering Too Human was released way back in 2008, that you should give you some perspective on how slow our judicial system works.
Though Silicon Knights should still be on the receiving end of a good part of the Too Human complaints, if this jury finds in favor of SK it could completely change the way gamers look at that colossal disappointment. Touted as the first part of a Norse-inspired sci-fi tale, Too Human was a game that was hyped beyond belief but was held back for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was its gameplay.
Since Too Human, Silicon Knights has struggled to find a traditional “hit” – this year they released the hugely disappointing X-Men: Destiny – but most gamers would like them to retry Too Human, hopefully with better results. Perhaps if Silicon Knights can win this case against Epic, that would give them the fervor to move forward with a Too Human sequel.
If Epic Games were to be found guilty of the charges, would be more lenient towards Silicon Knights for Too Human’s failure? Do you think Epic Games’ keeping the “best version” of Unreal for themselves is fair considering they created it?
Source: Industry Gamers
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silicom knights suck, too human was a major failure even though it had a good premise and the new xmen game they did is pure trash. their design animators etc are fine, its their designers that need ot wake the f*** up and put their a** into what they do, along side the programmers. it also wouldn’t be to bad if they got people to play test their games prior top s****ing it out on the shelves for full retail.
another prime example that you hate everyone and everything jwalka.
I for one hope SK wins this case because Epic is just a cheapskate company that even ruins their own game aka Gears 3 because they only listen to the Gnasher community. Plus what kind of company puts content on a disc and locks it so you have to pay more.
So go Silicon Knights.
i take it you haven’t played MvC3, some of the new resident evil games, they all use this bs method of ripping people off, its not entirely their fault as micro$oft has an agreement with devs to release DLC (its why the guys that did witcher 2 are sorta pissed off at charging for their free DLC).
all i had to see was the sci fi part of the game and i thought it was a completely stupid idea.
SK used to make EPIC games (pun intended) like the old Legacy of Kain games.
you’re just hating on them, stop hating, you don’t like anything and think everything is stupid your just a hater…
Between Epic Games stupid cheapskate tactics and SK’s crapy games, I wish there was a way they could both lose. Too Human was awful…just awful.
i was going to download the demo and give it a try, but i just couldn’t bring myself to do it. just the time it would take to download seemed like a waste after reading so many bad reviews
if you don’t like the game then wtf where you bashing my comment when i said the game was trash you f***ing hypocrite.
and now you prove that you cant read worth s**t. i never said i liked the game.
haters gonna hate.
same deal with you pussnuts, if you where able to comprehend my comments you would understand what i mean instead of assume i ‘hate everything’.
lalalalalalalala. i cant hear you i have my IM NOT LISTENING clothes on.
from here on out @$$hole, i could care less if you lived or died. so f**k off and try to be more appreciative of things in life.
Too Human, for what it is, isn’t “that bad.” It has the makings of some interesting mythology, but the combat was pretty damn frustrating. I’d like to see Dyack get a chance to try again just to see where this story was going.
well see, some of us prefer to have the mythology pure. technology put into a fantasy setting has always been an epic fail in my eyes .
i just hope SK can get a good game out (and it is WAY past due for a new Legacy of Kain game)
Mythology pure? Seriously? Why so serious about technology in a game? It’s a game, it’s intended to be fun (which Too Human wasn’t to me). The last game Silicon Knights did that I liked was Eternal Darkness, give us an ED sequel then we’ll talk.
aka F lore up the A
“aka F lore up the A”
which is PROBABLY why Too Human turned out as crappy as it did.
but ill have to check Eternal Darkness out…
i’ve been studying game dev for quite sometime, so when i abuse a dev team for something i’m usually doing so b/c i know that they could have done better. you need to see someone to help solve your issues b/c everytime i post you’re reply is about me ‘hating life’ probably b/c you’re so sick of it yourself, you use others to let out your load of depression and to feel good about yourself.
you don’t understand anything about game dev and are merely the end user so you cant even begin to bash my comments when i criticise a dev team for their ignorance.
Big talk jwalka. I can say that I am the queen of England a ninja master, studied all the tech degrees in the world and got them within only months! But without proof it’s highly unlikely. You are probably only a 27 year old virgin living in mom’s basement still raving about your ‘l33t’ skills and ‘mad’ talent. Proof or gtfo.
I personnaly liked the new X-men Game and I dont think Epic should hold onto the latest Edition.
It would be awesome to see a new Legacy of Kain game but I doubt we will ever see one since the actor who did the voice for The Elder God passed away sortly before Redemption was released and they stated since he had been in Legacy of Kain series since Blood Omen they did not want to replace him thus Legacy of Kain more then likely will be forever on hold
As for Too Human I never got a chance to play it but while if they game as a whole failed I don’t see that as Epics fault, however I have been following this since it started and the main issue is they didn’t give SK regular updates or stable releases of the Unreal 3 Engine which ended up costing SK a lot of money and if I remember right they ended up making there own engine to run Too Human that was similar to Unreal 3.
Gah Legacy of Kain: Defiance my bad. Stupid typo’s
@jwalka fine. when i FINALLY see you actually praise a game dev team instead of calling EVERYONE ignorant, arrogant, motherf**king sons of godd@m b*tches that cant ever do jack sh*t right, that couldn’t make a decent game to save their lives and obviously (even though many developers games are wildly popular and for the most part popular for a good reason) know nothing about game development even though alot of them have been developing games longer than your hateful punk @$$ has been alive, then i just might believe you.
But till then all i see is a hateful, arrogant child that parades himself around like hes all important, and feebly tries to make people believe he knows about game development when, in truth, he doesn’t know the first thing about it, and, being of limited intelligence, probably never will.
ive had it with people like yourself jwalka. and im through with your hatecraft.
Long life to you.
Does EPIC deserve the best engine? I’d say yes…considering they are the ones who make it. Too human failed because they were just too lazy. Poor execution makes a game fail, not an outdated engine. In fact, I bet you could use the original Unreal Engine and still make a good game.
Unless of course you ONLY play for graphics. At which point, I have to laugh. Sure, Too human didn’t have the same graphical capabilities as Gears, but at the same time, who cares? The two engines weren’t all that much different, if I remember right. It wasn’t until after Gears 2 that they actually started adding in special techniques to add better detail.
As stated above, there were no behavioral differences and this should be thrown out. Since it doesn’t work like that, I hope that Silicon Knights crashes for this and Epic wins the case.
Yes, I know I probably made no coherent sense. It is 2 AM here, and I dislike it when people try to place the blame elsewhere just to make themselves look better.
For a metaphor:
A Nascar driver swerves and hits a wall. He then sues the car company for not giving him the newest steering system even though he only paid for that car and whatever parts make it up.