Shacknews reports that subpoenas have been served to several Unreal Engine 3 liscensess in a lawsuit against Epic games, filed by Silicon Knights last year. The subpoenas have been served in order to acquire the liscensees' engine contracts as evidence in the upcoming trial. Specific liscensees are not named, though known liscensees include Square Enix, Ubisoft, 2K Boston/Australia, EA, and the US Army.
Mark Rein, Epic VP, stated, "I'm leaving the litigation to the lawyers but, if this is the case, I'd like to apologize to any of our licensees who Silicon Knights have inconvenienced." And inconvenienced they may be. If submitted as unsealed evidence, the contents of the contracts could become public record, allowing anyone access to the trade secrets therein. Epic's lawyers can move to seal the documents if this turns out to be the case.
The lawsuit was filed last July, with Silicon Knights claiming that Epic did not deliver final code for the Unreal Engine 3 on time, thus hampering the development of Too Human. The company further asserted that Epic purposefully sabotaged UE3 liscensees while promoting its own products such as Gears of War. Epic later filed a counterclaim and a motion to have the case dismissed. The motion was denied in November last year and both suits will come to trial.
[Via Joystiq]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-24-2008 @ 5:09PM
E.J. said...
With the successes of BioShock, Rainbow Six Vegas and Mass Effect, calling in the respective licensees will just work in Epic's favor.
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1-24-2008 @ 5:16PM
Tony said...
Just because the games finally made it out (as far as I know almost UE3 game has been delayed) or did well doesn't mean much. If SK can prove they were given tools later than promised, poor documentation and so forth that's all they really need to do because that's what most of the lawsuit entails. All of those things can still be true of those games.
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1-24-2008 @ 5:24PM
Larry *not allowed to say cheevo* said...
All lawsuit stuff aside, I hear the game is supposed to be pretty decent, which is good times.
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1-24-2008 @ 5:41PM
L said...
Yay and it don,t use the UE3 no more lol ...
O lets wait so long get the code then "dam emm we can,t use this" Then use a diff engine God SK are dicks. *STILL LOOKS TO BE A GOOD GAME*
1-25-2008 @ 7:20AM
violenceinhd said...
Silicon Knights fucking sucks anyway. Their games are way overrated.
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1-27-2008 @ 12:36PM
Renaldo the beer drinker said...
Yawn. This is a little off topic, but I really want to see this game on XBLA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Riders
Does anyone else remember playing this in the arcade. It was such a great game.
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