Too Human
DiscoZombie
Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Anyone following the scandal?</div>I can't wrap my mind around the lawsuits surrounding this game.
<a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/mega-%28legal%29-battle/epic-goes-all-countersuit-on-silicon-knights-287820.php" target="_blank">http://kotaku.com/gaming/mega-%28legal%29-...ghts-287820.php</a>
as I understand it, Silicon Knights was suing Epic for, like, not giving them a complete version of the UT3 engine that they paid for in order to make Too Human, messing up their whole development schedule. Now Epic is saying, "You're suing us? no, we're suing YOU!" with claims like Silicon Knights not only got the engine, but used it far more than the license allowed them to use it. Please correct me if I'm wrong; I don't speak Lawyer, but I'm curious as to what exactly is going on. Sounds like Too Human might even get canned if Epic gets their way.
the games industry is a tough business - understanding that, these guys should play nice with each other <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
feel free to discuss the actual game as well, if you want <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
<a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/mega-%28legal%29-battle/epic-goes-all-countersuit-on-silicon-knights-287820.php" target="_blank">http://kotaku.com/gaming/mega-%28legal%29-...ghts-287820.php</a>
as I understand it, Silicon Knights was suing Epic for, like, not giving them a complete version of the UT3 engine that they paid for in order to make Too Human, messing up their whole development schedule. Now Epic is saying, "You're suing us? no, we're suing YOU!" with claims like Silicon Knights not only got the engine, but used it far more than the license allowed them to use it. Please correct me if I'm wrong; I don't speak Lawyer, but I'm curious as to what exactly is going on. Sounds like Too Human might even get canned if Epic gets their way.
the games industry is a tough business - understanding that, these guys should play nice with each other <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
feel free to discuss the actual game as well, if you want <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Comments
Silicon Knights is a ton of idiots who got too ambitious, and wanted to blow everyone away at that E3 a year or two ago, but showed off a pretty unpolished, unfun, game to the press, and got slammed hard for it(like they should).
Instead of taking it like a man and just making the game better, now Denis Dyack is crying to the government that Epic didn't make everything completely readily available to them, despite the fact that the entire deal is that Epic was selling the engine as is.
As for Epic suing them back, I don't know. But I refuse to buy Too Human even if it turns out good, 'cause frankly, the BS that Denis Dyack is trying to pull off feels like some little kid crying to mom because he embarrassed himself in front of the pretty girl at school.
See? You can spin it either way!
WHO IS RIGHT?
WHO?!
Actually, it goes like this: Epic promised the world with the Unreal 3 engine, then failed to deliver on a large number of those promises. Almost every big game made with Unreal 3 but not developed by Epic has been delayed or cancelled. Features that the Too Human dev team saw in the Unreal 3 engine used in Gears of War seemed like stuff they wanted, so they asked Epic for that. Epic said "no, that's game specific code not covered under your license" and proceeded to kick Too Human's butt halfway around the corner at E3 with Gears of War. Later they released that code as part of the Unreal 3 engine license, apparently backtracking on the old claim that it was engine specific. Meanwhile, the Too Human dev team has been forced to write their own engine because Unreal 3 just isn't doing it for them, and Sony has sent engineers over to Epic just to get UE3 working on the PS3.
See? You can spin it either way!
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But the problem is, a lot of the 'big games' that have been in the U3 engine weren't even scheduled to be out til '08. And if you look at a few of Kotaku's earlier stories(and Gamasutra's initial inquiry into the entire thing with dozens of different developers), a clear majority of the devs said they've been great partners in the thing, the U3 engine has been able to do everything Epic said it could, and etcetera.
SK fell to Daikatana syndrome, nothing more.
But the problem is, a lot of the 'big games' that have been in the U3 engine weren't even scheduled to be out til '08. And if you look at a few of Kotaku's earlier stories(and Gamasutra's initial inquiry into the entire thing with dozens of different developers), a clear majority of the devs said they've been great partners in the thing, the U3 engine has been able to do everything Epic said it could, and etcetera.
SK fell to Daikatana syndrome, nothing more.
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Stranglehold, BioShock, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Turok, Fatal Inertia and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway were all delayed from their original release dates. Frame City Killer was canceled. Elveon has been in development forever with no release date named.
Stranglehold, BioShock, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Turok, Fatal Inertia and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway were all delayed from their original release dates. Frame City Killer was canceled. Elveon has been in development forever with no release date named.
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Stranglehold was delayed because of PS3 issues according to the press release, Bioshock didn't have a release date at all til this year, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a good example though. The others I'm not familiar with the reasons for being delayed.
I'm still gonna lean on the side of Epic here. I've heard nothing but good things from the developers whom I've spoken with, or read from, except SK and one of the EA branches.
Stranglehold was delayed because of PS3 issues according to the press release, Bioshock didn't have a release date at all til this year, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a good example though. The others I'm not familiar with the reasons for being delayed.
I'm still gonna lean on the side of Epic here. I've heard nothing but good things from the developers whom I've spoken with, or read from, except SK and one of the EA branches.
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PS3 issues? Like, "Sony had to send engineers down to Epic to get the UE3 engine working on the PS3 because the UE3 engine doesn't work" issues? Sounds like an engine problem to me.
And maybe you've only heard bad stuff from SK because SK was the only one treated badly. They're only claiming Epic shorted them, not that Epic is evil in every single one of their dealings. CliffyB and Dyack both talked smack prior to E3, and when Dyack gets slammed by people like you saying "I won't buy his game even if it's good!" all because the Unreal engine Too Human was built on wasn't as nice as the Unreal engine that CliffyB's Gears of War was built on, I think he has a right to get rather mad. They got a lot of flak after E3 and they're blaming it on Epic. Whether it's a credible claim is for the jury to decide, but you have to admit, it's not like their case is entirely without merit. Everythign they allege happened could definitely <i>have</i> happened.
PS3 issues? Like, "Sony had to send engineers down to Epic to get the UE3 engine working on the PS3 because the UE3 engine doesn't work" issues? Sounds like an engine problem to me.
And maybe you've only heard bad stuff from SK because SK was the only one treated badly. They're only claiming Epic shorted them, not that Epic is evil in every single one of their dealings. CliffyB and Dyack both talked smack prior to E3, and when Dyack gets slammed by people like you saying "I won't buy his game even if it's good!" all because the Unreal engine Too Human was built on wasn't as nice as the Unreal engine that CliffyB's Gears of War was built on, I think he has a right to get rather mad. They got a lot of flak after E3 and they're blaming it on Epic. Whether it's a credible claim is for the jury to decide, but you have to admit, it's not like their case is entirely without merit. Everythign they allege happened could definitely <i>have</i> happened.
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My reason for buying the game isn't because his engine isn't as nice as Epic's. I won't buy it because I think the lawsuit is bull######, and I thought that the Gaming Industry was having a pretty good record of keeping lawsuits out of things if at all possible. This seems like something to me that if Dyack wouldn't have hyped his own game up so much before that E3 it wouldn't have taken such a huge hit from the poor showing.
The stuff could have happened, but it strikes me as odd, considering that none of the other studios had this issue.
And as towards Sony sending people to Epic to figure out how to get it to run...I hope you know that nearly every game going on the PS3 has had huge issues developing for it, and there are a lot of developers who are either reluctant(VALVe) or are just plain refusing to develop for it(id) because of the difficult architecture of the Cell processor.
My reason for buying the game isn't because his engine isn't as nice as Epic's. I won't buy it because I think the lawsuit is bull######, and I thought that the Gaming Industry was having a pretty good record of keeping lawsuits out of things if at all possible. This seems like something to me that if Dyack wouldn't have hyped his own game up so much before that E3 it wouldn't have taken such a huge hit from the poor showing.
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It's not okay for Dyack to hype his game, but it's okay for everyone else to do it? The only reason anyone is mad at Dyack for hyping the game is because he didn't deliver, and according to Dyack the only reason he didn't deliver is because they were working with a crippled version of UE3 while Epic kept the good stuff for themselves until UE3 was over. If Epic had come through on its promises Dyack would be just another CliffyB or Peter Moore, talking a ton of smack but still being more or less respected because his game was able to follow through on the hype. I think he's understandably mad that it's Epic's fault that everyone hates him now.
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[quote name='Quaunaut' date='Aug 10 2007, 01:16 PM' post='1643194']
The stuff could have happened, but it strikes me as odd, considering that none of the other studios had this issue.[/quote]
Odd stuff has happened before. Unlikely does not mean impossible.
[quote name='Quaunaut' date='Aug 10 2007, 01:16 PM' post='1643194']
And as towards Sony sending people to Epic to figure out how to get it to run...I hope you know that nearly every game going on the PS3 has had huge issues developing for it, and there are a lot of developers who are either reluctant(VALVe) or are just plain refusing to develop for it(id) because of the difficult architecture of the Cell processor.
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Yeah, Valve's reluctant, iD won't develop for it, and Epic promises to have a super awesome engine but it turns out theirs doesn't work. What's the problem here? Oh, right, Epic promised an engine. It sold that engine to Too Human's dev team, in fact, and didn't follow through. Too Human's for the 360, but Epic certainly bit off more than it could chew for the PS3 and this lawsuit definitely suggests that they did the same for other platforms.
As for hyping a game, it's part of PR. You have to do it, even if the game sucks or is in a horrible stage. I've done it and it certainly wasn't easy, pleasant, or anything I wanted to do - but I still had to do it because that's how things work.
I'll be sitting the fence on this one till everything's said and done.
<i>WHAT?!</i>
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id's new engine runs on the PS3. From their website: "We are pleased to officially announce the name of our current game in development, "RAGE". Powered by idTech 5, RAGE was shown running simulationsly on PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, followed by a demonstration of our current toolset."
Or if the engine you get paid for will not pass the basic technical specs for load times on a system.
If that was me, I sure as a hell would be suing you.
Stranglehold, BioShock, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Turok, Fatal Inertia and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway were all delayed from their original release dates. Frame City Killer was canceled. Elveon has been in development forever with no release date named.
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I don't recall Frame City Killer being canceled having anything to do with the tech. The entire rest of that list was made up on the spot by an employee of Koei Canada, the makers of Fatal Inertia. They have precisely <i>0</i> insight into the development of any of the other games on the list and reasons for their delays, if they're even delays at all - some of these games that have 'slipped' never had official release dates to begin with and in the case of BioShock and Mass Effect ambition alone may have pushed things back from the original intended release date. R6 tried to ship ahead of, then roughly parallel to Gears - the first Epic UE3 game - which is extremely risky. Elveon is a terrible example if they've never even mentioned a release date - they could be right on schedule.
What's really interesting about the suit is that Silicon Knights is basically suing for the rights to take their modified version of Unreal and keep it as their own "Silicon Knights Engine" and <i>not have to pay Epic anything for it</i>. Someone on another board summed it up nicely as "Screw you guys, we're taking YOUR ball and going home." They go on to claim deliberate sabotage by Epic in holding back features they used in Gears of War, and other such shenanigans of holding things back from licensees.
Funny thing is, as I understand it from a colleague who was on Unreal tech at the time, Gears shipped a couple QA builds out of date from the licensee code base - this is the sort of thing you lock down well before you ship to prevent issues. QA builds are monthly updates sent out by Epic that have been fully tested and typically each include a wealth of fixes and updates that licensees are able to merge into their code. On top of that, Epic gives direct source code access to the licensees, allowing a company to pull any change down any time they feel like. If you're e-mailing back and forth on UDN and an Epic guy makes a quick change to fix something and checks it in, you can sometimes have it that day (though it's recommended to wait for the QA builds for stability). Some features are tested first in their own products before being opened to all licensees, but this is actually a <i>good</i> thing that helps ensure better stability. It sure beats having someone check in untested and in some cases I think uncompiled code into your game as late as a few weeks before gold.
This is not to say none of SK's claims are valid. There are certainly issues present, and Epic (as well as everyone else making engines right now) has gone through some form of struggle getting stuff going on the 360 and PS3. This is pretty much par for the course when licensing an engine that's not finished (which UE3 can be considered until Epic ships titles on PC/PS3 later this year with UT3 and GOW PC). Once SK crossed the line of "hey, we think you breached the contract" to "we aren't going to pay you anything for our version of <i>your</i> engine and think you were being all sneaky and deliberately sabotaging us," I think they sunk their own case.
Keep in mind too that SK's case is one of only 3 public statements against Unreal - the SK case (over a game that started 8 years ago as a PS1 game), Koei's speculative statement about other developers, and Ubi no longer using Unreal for other projects. Ubi, though, was already falling out of favor with Unreal and leaning towards their internally developed technologies, so I imagine they'd have dropped it either way - if you have the capacity to make a solid engine and tools and get all your dev teams on it, it doesn't make sense to shell out a million+ on someone else's tech. EA, though, basically dumped RenderWare (the sole reason they purchased Criterion) to shift titles to UE3 instead. Every major publisher has at least one UE3 project in the works either internally or externally, and Epic has to its credit well over 100 licenses. Sure, there's some anecdotal/anonymous stuff coming out of the woodwork, but finding a developer to ###### about the engine they work on is like finding a needle in a needle store. No engine is perfect for any given title, and there's always stuff that needs to be tailored to that project's needs, sometimes more than others.
id did show id tech 5 (Rockstar beat them to licensing the Rage Engine name, hahaha) running on the PS3, but have struggled the most on that platform from the sound of it, and that's John effing Carmack! The PS3 is causing issues for lots of developers on more than just one platform - hardly Epic's problem. And it's not like it just can't run on the PS3, but it's just a more difficult process to get it stable than on the other platforms. I mean, jeez, you have to burn a disc image every time you want to test a PS3 build; it's about as unfriendly as you can get <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
I personally think this will go Epic's way (requisite disclaimer noting this is a personal opinion and in no way represents my employers one way or the other), and if it doesn't I think it'll open the flood gates for every other developer who has ever struggled in the slightest with knowingly licensed unfinished tech. While I'd be amused to watch Raven/ATVI nuke-sue id from orbit, that's not the kind of direction our industry needs to go.
Edit: didn't mean to "keep in mind" you Max, I was trying to remember all the points from all the posts and stuff got mixed up <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> cleaned my thoughts up there a bit.