While Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 made Gears of War a resounding graphical success, other companies have apparently not had the same luck with Epic’s technology. Developer Silicon Knights, which licensed the engine for the Xbox 360 title Too Human, recently filed a lawsuit against Epic alleging that it hasn’t been living up to its end of the deal in licensing the engine.
According to Gamasutra, the suit claims, "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."
The lawsuit goes on to say that Too Human’s critical failure at E3 and the success of Gears of War at the same conference are evidence that Epic hasn’t been playing fair.
Epic’s vice president, Mark Rein responded in a statement sent to major gaming news outlets. “We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them… 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.”
