Game over man! The judge rules in favor of Epic on all counts of the SK lawsuit

[Xenon]

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/...n-knights-suit

I can't say I am surprised by this. Hopefully SK can move on, and openly discuss the future of Too Human now.


UPDATE: Epic prevails in suit against Silicon Knights, receives $4.45M in damages.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/17136...in_damages.php


OUCH! This is even worse than I thought. This judgment could be the deathblow to an already financially strapped SK.

[FoxbaT]

Oh what a sad day... had a lot of hope that things would start to work out for SK going forward.

[RAziel1979]

Goliath won the battle.

Now what DD?

[Morventhus]

Goliath won the battle.

Now what DD?

to prove that TH is still supported and release that 4 player co-op patch and announce TH2 at e3?

though i am sad to hear this i was rooting for SK

[daniel ampudia]

they must be really, really tight on budget now, man this is terrible

[ZIPGUN]

this is all!

[kouper]

to prove that TH is still supported and release that 4 player co-op patch and announce TH2 at e3?

though i am sad to hear this i was rooting for SK

Not gonna happen. Even if they had enough done to announce something like that, I'm guessing they don't have tens to hundreds of thousands to attend a trade show, let alone have a booth location purchased, a booth rented or prepared, shipping ready, pre-show assembly and set up paid for, and so on. Trade shows, even cheap low end ones are pricey endeavors. A company who just lost this hard isn't likely to put that money out there.

[lordhering]

I just want to know who owns the sk engine and how sk plans to pay epic...assuming this is 100% correct.

[TheRallyKiller]

Kickstarter time! If they have lost the ability to fully finance a game to compensate for legal costs then we'll do it. Some of us have toyed with the concept of an XBLA title. Denis, if you're reading this know I'm ready to send you some ca$h!

[Jurgy]

Can we please hear about DD's class that didnt make it into the final game now?

[ThEoRy]

Welp, that sucks! Obviously the loss of the case and monetary value certainly hurt Sk's immediate future. How will they now overcome the even more insurmountable public opinion of them? Gotta blow em all away. Apparently only Eternal Darkness will quiet the savage beast. It's the only positive thing anyone ever says about SK in recent articles. It has to be AAA quality great though. Nothing less will do. Good luck Denis. You know we are rooting for you.

[cap am]

They still might appeal. I really hope they've done a deal with Nintendo for Eternal Darkness 2 + because I doubt the MGS gives a ****.

[Wargamer]

I'm mad, not surprised though.

Guess SK is doomed to follow to road of Tim Shaffer and release XBLA games now :/

[Rogosh]

Here's to hoping they set aside cash for this knowing it could be the outcome when they started the law suite and weren't relying on winning to stay afloat. It would be a real shame if this killed the company. That 4.45 Mil doesn't count attorney fee's Epic could go after them for .

[Guirec730]

Fimbulwinter comes early. Damn.

[lordhering]

it is official

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/nor...cv00275/89570/

[TheRallyKiller]

Not only do I vote for a kickstarter, but I'm going to hit-up the cafepress store and buy some swag - I say this is no where near over and if the courts knock SK down, WE pick them back up!

[MasterOfDoritos]

Looks like the trilogy is dead.

[EasyLay]

This is a shame. A damn shame. Though not surprising.

God knows what's gonna happen with SK now.

The only silver lining I can think of is that SK may give us more information about the Too Human series now the legal stuff is over. Things like what they were planning for the trilogy, features that were cut from the original game, a post-mortem, concept art, what they had lined up in terms of DLC, etc. I'd still love to know as I'm still a big fan of the game.

So how about it, Denis? How about a long post to clear some things up for your loyal and long-suffering fans?

[FoxbaT]

This is a shame. A damn shame. Though not surprising.

God knows what's gonna happen with SK now.

The only silver lining I can think of is that SK may give us more information about the Too Human series now the legal stuff is over. Things like what they were planning for the trilogy, features that were cut from the original game, a post-mortem, concept art, what they had lined up in terms of DLC, etc. I'd still love to know as I'm still a big fan of the game.

So how about it, Denis? How about a long post to clear some things up for your loyal and long-suffering fans?

I loved this post of yours, but I don't think anyone from SK, including Denis, will openly talk of the whereabouts of TH as long as they have instances to appeal on this litigation process.

[kouper]

I loved this post of yours, but I don't think anyone from SK, including Denis, will openly talk of the whereabouts of TH as long as they have instances to appeal on this litigation process.

I don't really expect them to talk about TH at all. After all it's been like 2 years since they acknowledged TH's existence at all.

[Xenon]

I loved this post of yours, but I don't think anyone from SK, including Denis, will openly talk of the whereabouts of TH as long as they have instances to appeal on this litigation process.

I don't see the appeals panning out for SK either since most of their damage claims rely on what could have happened had they release earlier. Considering the nature of game development, were delays are commonplace, it would be extremely hard to prove that the UE3 was solely to blame for TH's late release. On the flip side it is very easy to prove that SK used Epics code in their engine. There is a huge difference from being morally right and legally proving it.

I have no doubt that Epic over-promised and under-delivered. But I also think that Denis/SK has shown a pattern of not taking responsibility for their shortcomings. For example, when they invited the press, egn/1up I think, over for a peak at Too Human, everything went well. They got a great write up and SK was happy. However, once they got, a much deserved, bad write up at the E3 for showing a poorly optimized demo, all of a sudden Denis decided to call the gaming media and its practices into question. Now I'm not saying that it was not something people needed to address, because there were and are some shady practices in the gaming media. But it was done in defense of a reporters truthful opinion of what SK showed him. It also was so transparent to everyone involved that it resulted in TooHuman/SK/Denis coming out looking even worse. Had they just agreed and said "Yeah its a **** demo due to the current state of the code, but things will run smooth when were done" Too Human may have not started out in such a PR hole to begin with. I don't even want to get into the whole "For or Against" thing at NeoGaf and its effects on the public's perception of the game. In almost all the instances Denis is deflecting people’s opinions of his game to something other than the game itself. That’s bull****.

This brings me to another point. With all the noise Denis made about how the press has negatively affected his game, how can he possibly turn around and say it’s all Epic’s fault? And then expect them to pay SK for what they ”think” the game would game would have made had it been a success. It’s impossible to hinge the entire failure on a single component of a piece of entertainment. Yet that is what SK presented to the judge, which resulted in the judge setting the maximum damages to $1 on all counts. The logical thing would have been to count up the number of hours wasted on modifying the engine to perform that tasks that SK was told the EU3 engine could do and finding the documentation to back those claims up. If possible they could have also detailed how the engine was responsible for the lack of 4 player online which hurt the games potential sales. But one could argue that the expectation for that should not have been set until it was playable in the game. Either way expecting Epic to bare the sole responsibility for the failure and wanting them to pay for “what if” damages is ridiculous.

It’s pretty clear who is responsible for Too Humans failure, SK. I have discussed this before in length but I’ll give a quick overview of the main two reasons. First, SK failed to define its game to the press and the public. All too often the reviews contained comparisons to games in completely different genres. I think this turned many people off when they played the demo. But had they not made the second mistake many people could have been convinced that it was still worth playing. That mistake was not creating a introduction level to walk people though a completely new and unorthodox set of controls. There is a reason why every new version of Call of Duty has one even though the control is almost unchanged from version. Leave no consumer behind! You want your game accessible to every consumer possible. I love TH but it was a tough road to get there.

It’s a shame that SK went this route. They could have tried to figure out what could be improved and patched to try and make a better product for potential consumers and the people who bought their product. I think it’s a lesson that could not only be important to other companies but on a personal level as well. You can either look to blame others for your failures or instead focus your energies on bettering yourself. In the end the only smart choice is the one you have control of.


/rant #231

[kouper]

I agree with that. We can even further the route of SK blaming everyone else to Xmen destiny. When a magazine said the game had fun bits but looked like garbage in a preview the first thing that happened was SK came out and said the pictures where a leek of Alpha assets, this was, A- a straight up lie, and B- a straight up lie. Seriously, we invites these people over to play the game, but when they posted pictures we gave them we call it a leek and accuse them of attempting to hurt us?

And them the game comes out, and reviews bashed the game what happened? First we. Lame reviewers for not playing the game enough, apparently you have to beat the game multiple times to truly max out and experience your character(sounds familiar right?) and then they go on to blame the publisher (as opposed to te engine creator)

Sounds like at this point like a teenager or man-child who completely fails to accept responsibility for anything they've done. Not to mention following all this up with a lawsuit against one of the most popular studios out there.

I want to say I like SK, but at this point I thi k the more honest statement would be to say I like TH and would love to see the series continued, though at this point in time I have 0 faith in that happening.

[RAziel1979]

I'll wait for the boss man to say what he has to say about this whole crazy thing.
Are you still in the maelstrom or out of it? we loyal fans need answers.
PG, where the hell are you man!?

[Purple Gryphon]

PG, where the hell are you man!?

Not sure what to say man.

First 38 studios goes down and now this decision for SK. I was really hoping they would win the breach of contract claim. They still have the appeal but you never want to go into an appeal with a loss. I don't know how SK would pay the judgment and stay afloat but by all public accounts they should have closed long ago.

Wishing everyone at SK all the best. I still want a TH2 or ED2 or some new solid SK game, but only they know what they can do now. More than the Money I fear Sk's name (goodwill) is not going to be able to get their next project funded which would be a shame.

If they were to turn to the fans for support ED would probably be their best hope. Most people love ED even when they talk bad about SK. I think more people would contribute to that than TH2 as much as many of us want it. Nintendo could and would probably fund ED2 if they made it a close to launch title.

The quickest way to get money would be to release TH2 and 3 in XBLA chapters with upgrades to the core game like camera, 4-player coop, etc. But of course they have to go through MS.

I hope to be on this weekend and play some TH. I know DD was planning to talk more about the development of TH once the case was done but not sure he will do that with the loss. It will probably look like more complaining but I guess if they won it would look like gloating.