Epic: Silicon Knights Trying To 'Enrich Itself At Our Expense'

Epic has filed a motion to dismiss and counterclaim in its legal battle with developer Silicon Knights, saying, in part, that the developer's suit is "a cynical effort... to unlawfully enrich itself at the expense of Epic Games." Epic's motion to dismiss memorandum, sent to Gamasutra by Epic's Mark Rein, says of Silicon Knights that it "used Epic's intellectual property to develop what SK expects will be a commercially lucrative video game that it is about to publicly release," but, "having exploited Epic's intellectual property to its advantage, SK now seeks to renege on its payment obligations under the License Agreement." "In short," reads the documents, "SK's lawsuit is a pretense. 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." Silicon Knights originally filed its lawsuit in mid-July, alleging, in part, 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." Among the specific alleged breaches of contract were sections 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, but Silicon Knights maintains that the March deadline wasn't truly met until November 2006. Gamasutra will update this post with more details of Epic's counterclaim following further review of the documents.