WHOA. This is like unraveling a legacy or something. What will happen to the value of copies of Too Human on the open market? Can they even be traded? Did they just reveal their secret games in production via court documents? Does the judge know they only have 5 employees. Does this mean Dyack can't go around to publishers saying 'look at these games we made - give me money' because it would actually be against a judge's ruling?

Wow, those are some harsh penalties. I wonder how much longer Silicon Knights can stay afloat.

I wonder if they think in retrospect if it was wise of them to sever ties with Nintendo over their ideals of the future direction of gaming.

btw: SK now has to pay 9 million.

edit: Hmh. Now the number is clearly in the first paragraph. Don't comment when too tired.

This is really kind of a travesty for the games industry overall. I'd like to see a company like Square Enix consider buying SK, or the SK ip and rehire some of the old company's staff. Obviously there was a lot of talent. They just needed the support to cultivate it.

This is a painful case to watch.

Hope someone somewhere will eventually explain how exactly the penalty doubled (and explore the zany ups and downs of the whole trial). Hope this isn't just swept under the rug as "some confusing legal stuff. whatevs."

-First reaction is: it sounds like Epic wanted to make an example of SK, so no other licensee would try something like this. But I have no context for understanding whether this extra smackdown is standard procedure in cases like this, or particularly vicious. (anyone?)

- Reading through the filing just reveals a lot of motions have been filed back and forth during July and August (and the court is granting and denying all of them? in parts? wee! max confusion!)
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/north-carolina/ncedce/5:200
7cv00275/89570/862/


+ Looks like SK filed for a stay of execution, and the court replied by saying the deadline for post-trial motions had passed. (is this a sign SK's lawyers just don't know how to do their job? again?).
+ Looks they granted Epic's motion to seal its response to SK's motion for "judgement as a matter of law" (and 2 exhibits attached to that response). That means SK tried to say there was insufficient evidence for something, and Epic's response won't be released (but it worked, and included 2 exhibits).

I'm dying to understand whether SK is getting severely crushed by Goliath, or whether snarky commenters are right in spewing their bile on SK (Dyak having a big ego, or your personal opinions on the quality of Too Human, seem irrelevant to me).

I like how the canadian government gave them a stimulus package. See why we don't do that crap in America? Oh wait...

I am sure they will be working through the weekend backing up all their servers to separate drives... muahahahah!

I'm going to be honest, the amount of ... "compassion" (for the lack of a better term) that SK is getting in the comments is...odd.

There are some signs that Dyack isn't exactly the best at management. I can't imagine Nintendo would ever really just let great talent just walk. There might not have been talent at SK, or that that talent was being held back by management.

But what's a bit more telling is Dyack's extremely odd behavior at NeoGAF. Where he attacked people for attacking his game before it came out. And then Too Human came out and it was a lemon. And then he backpeddled and said he was trolling them as some kind of psychological experiment. Then he later backpeddled more by saying he was trying to save them from themselves. It was very surreal to say the least.

And then there was the Epic lawsuit. Which didn't make sense to me. I didn't see Ubisoft having any problems with Rainbow Six, Bioware with Mass Effect, or EA with Army of Two. If the problems were as bad as SK said it was, you'd think this would have been a class action lawsuit. But it wasn't. It was just SK vs Epic. The entire suit seems really petty, and I'm sure Dyack is eating his hat for it now.

Then there was that rather recent sensational story on Kotaku.
http://kotaku.com/5955223/what-went-wrong-with-silicon-knights-x+men-destiny
It really doesn't sound so unbelievable. Dyack sounds like one of those guys that can't see the trees for the forest. He can see the big picture on what he wants, but he doesn't understand how to navigate his way to get there.

Dyack seems like the kind of guy that'd burn every bridge he comes across. Nintendo is too controlling, burn it. Unreal Engine is too junky, burn it. Gaming community is too jaded, burn it. Publishers want us to make a licensed game, burn it.

Call me crazy, but I don't think Dyack is the kind of guy that should just be given the benefit of a doubt. At least not anymore.

With the setelement the judge might've put them out of business...kill unrealeased games,destroy code,hack up your engine and oh yeah anything out there not sold RECALL then DESTROY?!!

overkill is what i'd call it. Sad fate for the one hit wonder studio.

That's true i just hoped that wasn't true and for some reason gollaith was smashing david...bigger companys have bigger pockets and if they had stolen from epic they should've stopped robbed and ran not robbed stopped and suied so i had hoped they were simply singled out and prefered to believe the truth was somewhere between what both companys said which wouldn't have been outright theft as almost anyone uses part of ue 3 if epic demanded more royalitys than sk originaly thought they agreed to as when nvidia screwed ms on xb 1 demanding more and more over what was agreed...one thing's for sure we'll likely never know the truth as it's sealed along with sk's fate.

Crappy game or not i grabbed xmen for ps3 on amazon and $19.99 wasn't bad when target was selling it @ $59.99!!

Am I the only one thinking about the needless pollution that will ensue from this? We already have plenty of games buried in the desert. Let's not destroy our land with -wink- Silicon any more than needed.

I would like to start by saying that I disagree with the judges ruling in its entirety (plus forgive my spelling, Im both using an xbox chat pad and rely on spell checks for everything I write bar code). Firstly, SKs origional lawsuit should have gone through, I loved epics Unreal engine, but they definately should have supported SK, especially after SK payed for that support. If you pay for a service, then dont recieve it, you damn well kick up a stink, then if that doesnt work, you SUE. Epic sold a service to SK, SK didnt recieve support, Epic should pay for damages. Secondly, because SK couldnt use the Unreal engine, due to lack of support, being terribly Alpha in its finish (from unpleasant experience) etc., they had to make their own engine. The fact that it was similar in theoretical approach to epics unreal was well.... because it was a game engine... I have used several over the years, and you know what? They are all very similar... Can Crytek sue epic? How about the frostbite engine? Its practically identical in features to Unreal.... (I really shouldnt give epic ideas here). No. The fact that epic claim that their code was used is quite amusing, Bethesda used Gamebryo for years... but ever so slightly tweaked it... to you know... work, you didnt see the creators of gamebryo complaining. This case makes me ever so very angry. I have feel dirty knowing I have given epic money, I feel disgusted to be associated with such a twisted and vile company, I want to sue epic for damages to my sence of right from wrong. The final thing I want to point out, why does every one say that Too Human was a lemon? Or bad? Having lost most of my free time to games (and indeed most of my not so free time), I have played the hell out of all the games in my collection, and there are a few I ALWAYS come back to, no matter how buggy they are: Morrowind (admitedly using over 12gig of mods) simply because its easily one of the best games ever made... but broken; Unreal Tournament (2004) simply because I cant get enough sexy female voices saying "wicked sick" (same goes for my wife); Borderlands, because its well... borderlands... and finally.... Too Human. The main problem me, and indeed all of my friends, acquaintances, family members, and random people I talk to, is the really "epic"ally bad camera. The story was gripping (if alittle sparse), the game play was intense, the graphics still blow most games out of the water, and the sound effects were car crashingly good. Plus EVERY one I meet online has played it for about a month at least... thats more than I can say about Gears, which was in my humble opinion, boring, repetative, and an insult to the Unreal Tournaments name... strange how few people talk about how the main characters from both games looked rather similar (Gears Marcus Vs UT3s... Marcus... only real difference was a face tatoo).

@warren I didnt realise they had done this, the version of the report I saw (in the UK, and can no longer find said article) basically said they had written their own code. Even if that were the case (monuental f#*k up by them), the fact that they had spent so long trying to use the unreal engine, basically meant they would have to build around it. I still feel that the judge may have had a few back handers, epic were definately guilty of NOT living up to their contract.

On a side Note, I may well have relatives in the US, my great grandfather was in the merchant navy... so probably :) No, Im from Northern Ireland, and I had noticed the same last names :) Even more stuning is our choice of profession.... Not many Blyths in gaming unfortunately.