Silicon Knights Becomes Crippled After Losing Appeal Against Epic Games

The struggling company owes Epic Games $9.2 million dollars.

By Anthony Vigna. Posted 01/14/2014 16:00 2 Comments     ShareThis

Silicon Knights, known for GameCube classics like Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, will be suffering from a huge legal dispute led by Epic Games, which came to an end when it was rejected for an appeal on January 6.

The Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games case started as early as 2007, when SK accused Epic of failing to keep its promises with the functionality of Unreal Engine 3. In response to this lawsuit, Epic counter-sued SK in 2012 and claimed that the company used Unreal Engine 3 coding within its own engine without Epic’s permission. The courts ruled in favor of Epic, awarding it with $4.5 million in damages and $4.7 million in legal fees. With SK’s recent rejected appeal, this court case has finally reached its conclusion, leaving SK with $9.2 million dollars owed to Epic. Unfortunately, it seems that SK will not be able to pay these fees, leaving the company to head towards its demise.

What do you think about this legal situation? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Gamasutra

2 Responses to “Silicon Knights Becomes Crippled After Losing Appeal Against Epic Games”

  • 0 points
    says...

    Looking back at the Gamecube’s history now – a lot more of what I was reading back then makes perfect sense with this new light cast upon it.

    Back then – during the production of Eternal Darkness – interviews were absolutely chock full of how Silicon Knights, and in extension, Denis Dyack, were getting tons of great tips from the legendary Miyamoto. Why – there was barely a day that passed without a video conference with the man at Nintendo, or with the team at Nintendo who was “closely monitoring” the progress on the title. Seems Nintendo wanted to be very “hands on” with Silicon Knights.

    And then, with Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes – as awesome as the game was – it was essentially already a finished product. Hard to screw up when you’re starting with greatness.

    These two projects seem to be the only things that Silicon Knights ever really got off the ground. Turns out – they didn’t know how to make games all that well – and it becomes increasingly clear that the reason Nintendo was so “hands on” was because they knew Silicon Knights didn’t have it together game-wise. They were no doubt great and instrumental in creating the very Western, very North American narration, presentation, and feel of the game – but the game itself – that seems to have been Nintendo’s handiwork all along.

    Which makes perfect sense then that this “Western” developer would be given the handles of Metal Gear Solid – a title about as entrenched in North American idioms as you can get – but with the main game pretty much already completed.

    What happens now is of little importance. What was so remarkable with the Silicon Knights story was how they essentially kept a veil over the collective heads of . . . well, the world – and continued to get away with it for so long. Outside of that, and maybe the rights to the title of “Eternal Darkness,” there’s really nothing of note with Silicon Knights or Denis Dyack.

    • 222 points
      PanurgeJr says...

      Silicon Knights and Rare are excellent examples of what working with Nintendo does for developers. I imagine that Next Level Games understands this, and that that’s why they’ve chosen to work only with Nintendo.

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