Silicon Knights Boss Dismisses Courtroom Setback

Despite a courtroom setback in December, Silicon Knights chief Denis Dyack says he will ultimately expose Epic's "misconduct" to the world.

The legal battle between Silicon Knights and Epic Games has been dragging on since the middle of 2007, when Silicon Knights filed suit claiming that Epic misrepresented the capabilities of the Unreal Engine 3, leading to a long and damaging delay in the release of Too Human, and refused to fix or support the engine as required.

Epic gained an edge in December 2011 when a judge decided to exclude the testimony of accountant and financial analyst Terry Lloyd, who said that Silicon Knights had suffered more than $58 million in losses stemming from the delay. The court decided that Lloyd was "not qualified" to come up with any kind of accurate estimate of losses, noting that his figures are "unreliable and speculative."

But according to Dyack, Lloyd's testimony is just one piece of a much larger puzzle and only "one of the few rulings that Epic can say went their way."

"Epic filed over 20 separate motions to exclude essentially every aspect of the voluminous evidence against them, including all of Silicon Knights' expert witnesses [beyond Mr. Lloyd] and all of the third-party information regarding Unreal Engine 3," Dyack told GamesIndustry. "Other than this one ruling on Mr. Lloyd, they were not successful."

"It is important to understand that the jury decides damages and will hear evidence from many people and see many case documents. Mr. Lloyd's testimony was only one piece," he said, adding that he is "looking forward to Epic's misconduct finally being aired in the light of day."

Regardless of Epic's role in the affair, Too Human was a pretty big bomb, leading Microsoft to give up on the second and third parts of the planned trilogy. Dyack, however, insists that the studio still intends to complete the trilogy.