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[Nemo]

Oh haha okay. That should be fun.

How much of a chance does SK have? I forgot, but I assumed they had a decent case

 

[sphinx]

The difference being sk know they cant make eternal darkness without nintendo and are so far up shit creek that surely they dont have funds to work on something specutively

well there you have a point. I didn't know that.

ED2 better live up to its predecessor

 

[Dylan]

What about this $4 million from the federal government ?

http://www.wellandtribune.ca/Articl...1&auth=KARENA WALTER, QMI AGENCY&archive=true

This is what I thought the OP was talking about originally. So, did they actually receive the federal money but not the Provincial money??


Also, this is a pretty interesting topic, but this thread is already getting derailed by Eternal Darkness 2 speculations....

 

[Surface of Me]

There is a non-trivial chance that Epic could be crippled/bankrupted by this trial. Given the information in the SK court filing, I think that the likelihood of SK either winning or getting a substanial settement are pretty good. Its seems fairly likely that epic breached the contract. The real question is what were the damages attributable to that breach. worst case scenario for epic is all profits from Gears + lost Too human revene, with the award tripled for punative damages.

Do you have a link to all this? I always thought they really had nothing.

 

[Dylan]

I'm not really sure how to feel about this.
On one hand I wasn't exactly thrilled when the grant was announced for SK, but on the other I think about the number of people who got laid off last year =/

Why not be supportive of these kinds of grants? Ontario/Canada doles out a lot of money to businesses in order to support employers who are generally more successful doing business in the USA. Also, these kinds of grants simply allow Canadian developers to make better games overall. Even if you don't like Silicon Knights per se, I think it's still a good thing that the government is acknowledging game development as one of Canada's un-sung strengths in the business world.

 

[Mifune]

There is a non-trivial chance that Epic could be crippled/bankrupted by this trial. Given the information in the SK court filing, I think that the likelihood of SK either winning or getting a substanial settement are pretty good. Its seems fairly likely that epic breached the contract. The real question is what were the damages attributable to that breach. worst case scenario for epic is all profits from Gears + lost Too human revene, with the award tripled for punative damages.

I think the case has gone on far too long for SK to not get something out of it. Epic's multiple attempts to have the case dismissed were all denied. And their counter-suit was pretty much laughed out of court.

As far as we know, SK has had one piece of evidence dismissed. And that was related to the extent of the DAMAGE, not whether Epic breached the contract.

 

[Nemo]

There is a non-trivial chance that Epic could be crippled/bankrupted by this trial. Given the information in the SK court filing, I think that the likelihood of SK either winning or getting a substanial settement are pretty good. Its seems fairly likely that epic breached the contract. The real question is what were the damages attributable to that breach. worst case scenario for epic is all profits from Gears + lost Too human revene, with the award tripled for punative damages.

Damn, they're gonna get PAID

 

[Forsaken82]

There is a non-trivial chance that Epic could be crippled/bankrupted by this trial. Given the information in the SK court filing, I think that the likelihood of SK either winning or getting a substanial settement are pretty good. Its seems fairly likely that epic breached the contract. The real question is what were the damages attributable to that breach. worst case scenario for epic is all profits from Gears + lost Too human revene, with the award tripled for punative damages.

I don't think so. Worst case scenario is Epic is forced to compensate for the extended time and money SK had to spend to basically rebuild their engine so it worked properly (or sufficiently enough for release) along with the additional damages. But they shouldn't have to pay anything regarding Gears sales.

unless you are a lawyer and obviously know more than me

 

[EatChildren]

Just curious is there a link for this?

Jeff Giffen's resume:

Platforms/Software:
Nintendo
Wii, Wii U
Revolution SDK, Project Café, Freescale Codewarrior for Wii 1.5

...


Experience:
Silicon Knights, St. Catharines Ontario
Programmer, June 2010 – Present
Wii Technology Development
Wii U SDK knowledge
Implemented dynamic shadowing on the GP, with scaling detail and a fixed memory footprint. Supported full scene and per-dynamic shadowing, with up to 4x post pass shadow output.
Constructed a TEV based depth of field post process. Featured 4x Gaussian blur, and near / far twin focus fields.
Optimized the EFB copy-out system and the post process memory to be shared between the shadowing and depth of field techniques. This was also ground work for distortion effect support.
Developed threaded static geometry command buffer construction via GD.
Upgraded renderer to support tiling for HD output. Integrated Revolution screenshot tool, and upgraded it to accept the HD output.
Installed custom interrupt handlers, with on screen call stack print and screenshot.
Built in character fade support via a depth shell prepass render.
Implemented 3D Combat Text pop-ups.
Installed custom Thread Local Storage support
Added 16:9 and progressive video output, as well as PAL support.
Installed Home Button Menu, Banner, Icon, Strap Screen, controller disconnection messages, and other varying TCR requirements.
XMD Wii Technology Support
Solely responsible for all Wii tech support to game team.
Upgraded and maintained everyone’s SDKs and NDEVs with current software.
Optimized the project down to use ½ the memory footprint, and trimmed 2MB of executable size to fit within platform limitations.
Modified Codewarrior builds to be parallel and file grouped, making them 1200% faster.
Undertook performance analysis on the game via the Wii Profiler.
Researched Broadway and Xenon CPU cache architectures, and gained a footprint reduction with platform appropriate tuning of the small block allocator.
Investigated and solved a thread contention performance stutter in the small block allocator.
Installed another memcpy / memzero for a %220 speed boost.
Fixed and used engine memory tracking software to find & fix several significant memory leaks.
Undertook and automated the mastering, burning, and retail testing process.
Maintained and improved the following tools: Wii Profiler, HD screenshot tool, and our PC debug console.
Consulted with Freescale and Nintendo over bugs in the Codewarrior software.

Some of that is Wii work I think, but he clearly state the Wii U too.

 

[Woo-Fu]

I'm surprised they're not suing Canada.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

for all we know ED2 can can be like "sadness"

meaning, sure they are working on it, but doesn't mean it has been approved, green lighted or that they have found a publisher.

Nintendo owns the IP, Nintendo would be the publisher and the game wouldn't be under development without Nintendo's approval (or initial interest, in the case of Man Icarus.)

 

[elcranky]

Do you have a link to all this? I always thought they really had nothing.

There are PDFs of the filing. I read the whole thing when it was released.

 

[elcranky]

I don't think so. Worst case scenario is Epic is forced to compensate for the extended time and money SK had to spend to basically rebuild their engine so it worked properly (or sufficiently enough for release) along with the additional damages. But they shouldn't have to pay anything regarding Gears sales.

unless you are a lawyer and obviously know more than me [/QUOTE

If SK claims are true, Epic worked on Gears instead of fuliflling their contractual obligations to SK, among other breachs. Therefore, SK can ask for a disgorgement of Gears profits from the contract breach. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that this will happen.

I wouldn't be surprised if SK got a settlement in the $10 million range. Worst case scenario for Epic is a multi-hundred million dollar judgement and opening up liability to lawsuits from ever single licensee from that time.