Silicon Knights: Our Game Engine Better Than Unreal!

Silicon Knight's attorney (lawyer to us) has made the following claim following Unreal Engine creator Epic's counter-claim for damages:



Ding! Ding! Round 2
This has all kicked off since Epic's outspoken bossman, Mark Rein hit back against Too Human developer Silicon Knights' recent attempt to sue his company (Round 1). Epic's hit back comes in the form of counter-suing with damages.

Rein claims that^†,"The plain language of the Silicon Knights' Complaint makes clear that Silicon Knights wants to take Epic's Licensed Technology, pay nothing for it, and use it any way it pleases."

Just to refresh your Friday minds, here's what Silicon Knights' plain language looked like, "Epic violated the Agreement with Silicon Knights by, among other things, failing to provide a working game engine..."

In Rein’s opinion Silicon Knights "used Epic's intellectual property to develop what SK expects will be a commercially lucrative video game that it is about to publicly release… having exploited Epic's intellectual property to its advantage (to make Too Human - pictured here) SK wants to renege on its payment obligations under the License Agreement.”

In a statement, Rein claims,"SK's lawsuit is a pretence… SK does not have any valid claims against Epic. SK filed suit in a bid to renegotiate the License Agreement, in the hope that Epic will prefer that to the burden of responding to discovery and associated adverse publicity."

Epic is seeking damages of a minimum of $650,000 (£322k) and wants any code and games that it claims infringe its copyright to be destroyed.

Round 3
But now even more washing is being aired in public with gamesdaily reporting that Silicon Knights' attorney, Christopher T. Holland is having no truck with Rein's counter-strike (pun fully intended).

"We don't think Epic's counterclaim has any merit. We believe strongly that our claims in our complaint will prevail and the damages Silicon Knights has suffered in connection with its original complaint are vastly more, millions of dollars more than what Epic claims its damages are in its counterclaim. They've set forth $650,000 and our claims will dwarf that substantially", Holland told gamesdaily. That's fighting talk where we come from.

SPOnG has contacted both parties this morning and we hope to bring you a fully detailed update shortly.

^{†Source: Develop}