Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:03 pm
According to a statement from Epic's Mark Rein sent to leading news outlets including Gamasutra, the Unreal Engine 3 creator is the subject of a lawsuit from licensee Silicon Knights regarding UE3-utilizing Xbox 360 title Too Human.
Rein's statement, sent out to the media this afternoon, reads as follows: "This morning we were served with a lawsuit by Silicon Knights. We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them."
The Epic VP continues: "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."
He concludes: "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."
The suit initially alleges that: "Rather than provide support to Silicon Knights and Epic’s other many licensees of the Engine, Epic intentionally and wrongfully has used the fees from those licenses to launch its own game to widespread commercial success while simultaneously sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games."
It goes on to detail a number of specific alleged breaches of contract, particularly related to the delivery of Xbox 360 versions of the Unreal Engine 3 code. Epic's licensing document stated that a functional version of the engine would be available within 6 months of development kits being available.