You might recall the very long saga of Silicon Knights, developer of Too Human, and its battle with Epic over the licencing of what they believed was an unfinished Unreal Engine 3. Silicon Knights blamed Epic for charging them good money to use a broken engine, and then using that money to fund the development of Gears of War.
Epic counterclaimed that Silicon knights not only used Unreal Engine 3 as per the licencing agreement, but then used it illegally to make other games, including the terrible X-Men Destiny, with proof that silicon Knights had straight up copied code from UE3, including typos originally made by Epic staff.
Over decade or so that the litigation went back and forth, judges finally settled in Epic’s favour – forcing Silicon Knights to recall and destroy – at its own expense – every single unsold copy of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny. Silicon Knights was further ordered to cough up $9.2 million to Epic in damages, and help cover $278,000 in costs, $2.1 million in attorneys’ fees, and $2.3 million in prejudgment interest. It’s a whole lot of money silicon Knights could ill-afford.
And it’s just gotten worse. Silicon Knights filed an appeal against the judgement last year – but the US court of appeals has just handed down a negative judgement, meaning that Silicon Knights’ goose is now well and truly cooked – and has little remaining recourse.
Silicon knights founder and bossman, Denis Dyack most recently joined up with former silicon knights employees to form Precursor Games to Kickstart an Eternal Darkness sequel in Shadow of the Eternals. Unfortunately for them, each of their successive attempts at getting the game funded has failed miserably, with the game now being placed on hold.
Last Updated: January 13, 2014
Admiral Chief in Vegas
January 13, 2014 at 11:33
Ouchie
Rags
January 13, 2014 at 11:38
Epic victory 😉
Admiral Chief in Vegas
January 13, 2014 at 11:38
looool
Alien Emperor Trevor
January 13, 2014 at 11:40
As jy dom is moet jy kak.
Umar digs KOS-MOS
January 13, 2014 at 11:51
Damn copying with typos….
That’s like copying your maths homework from the kid that likes to sniff his belly button…YA GONNA BE CAUGHT OUT BOOOI
TiMsTeR1033
January 13, 2014 at 11:57
Too bad, so sad…
Brady miaau
January 13, 2014 at 15:26
I have gone through source code from contractors, with some funny typo’s.
So you put some of the code, typo included, into Google and hit search. Wow. Some strange sites.
It is all too easy to copy and paste. It is, after-all, the fastest way to replicate an error.
It is the typo’s that amuse me the most. When the contractor obviously does not fully understand the incredibly complicated piece of code, that amuses me not
My point is, for future maintainability, be careful with this AND it is fairly easy to spot this type of thing. Silly people. But I do feel for Silicon Knights.