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Gaming Friday, January 18th 2013 at 1:20 pm

Too Late to Grab Too Human Content From Xbox Marketplace Since It’s All Disappeared

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The end may finally be here for Silicon Knights. It wasn’t too long ago that a Canadian court ordered the beleaguered video game developer to recall and destroy all unsold copies of their games that used Unreal Engine 3 due to a licensing spat with Epic Games. It was a pretty thorough gutting of the company’s catalog, with both Too Human and X-Men: Destiny on the chopping block, that Silicon Knights unfortunately had coming to them. Now it appears that we’ve reached the final stages as Too Human has been pulled from the Xbox Marketplace.

The game’s been pulled from Games on Demand, and the demo and various tidbits like themes are gone too. It’s unclear at this point why they were pulled and exactly what hand the ruling against Silicon Knights had, but X-Men: Destiny appears to still be up so who knows. It’d be odd for them to pull one and not the other, but I don’t pretend to fully understand the inner workings of Microsoft’s Games on Demand service.

Until an official reason comes down the pipe, we can only speculate, but one thing’s certain: Silicon Knights was definitely ordered to stop selling and distributing Too Human. It’s hard to imagine that this has nothing to do with it at all.

(Xbox Marketplace via @lifelower, Eurogamer)

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  • http://blog.coatesism.com/ Shaun M Coates

    So they had to stop selling the game because it used Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, but could they sell the rights to the Too Human franchise to another game studio?

  • Rollin Bishop

    From my understanding, they could still use the franchise too. It’s not the content of the game that’s at issue, but the coding framework.

  • http://blog.coatesism.com/ Shaun M Coates

    That would be cool! Specially if it ended up being a multi-platform title.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-E-Screws-Jr/5200506 Bruce E. Screws Jr.

    Are we missing out by not having the game available? Is it any good?

  • illusiognarly

    this was pulled from wikipedia Silicon Knights v. Epic Games

    In 2007, Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for failure to “provide a working game engine”, causing the Ontario based game developer to “experience considerable losses.” Silicon Knights’ suit alleged that Epic was “sabotaging” Unreal Engine 3 licensees. Epic’s licensing document stated that a working version of the engine would be available within six months of the Xbox 360 developer kits being released. Silicon Knights claimed that Epic not only missed this deadline, but that when a working version of the engine was eventually released, the documentation was insufficient. They also claimed Epic had withheld vital improvements to the game engine, claiming they were “game specific”, while also using licensing fees to fund development of their own titles rather than the engine itself.[8]

    On August 9, 2007, Epic Games counter-sued Silicon Knights, claiming that they were using its engine without paying royalties.[9] On May 30, 2012 Epic Games defeated Silicon Knights’ lawsuit, and won its counter-suit for $4.45 Million USD on grounds of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract.[10]

    Consistent with Epic’s counterclaims, the presiding judge stated that Silicon Knights had “deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games’ copyrighted code, and then attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Games’ copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games’ copyrighted code as Silicon Knights’ own”.[11] As a result, on November 7, 2012, Silicon Knights was directed by the court to destroy all game code derived from Unreal Engine 3, all information from licensee-restricted areas of Epic’s Unreal Engine documentation website, and to permit Epic Games access to the company’s servers and other devices to ensure these items have been removed. In addition, they were instructed to recall and destroy all unsold retail copies of games built with Unreal Engine 3 code, including Too Human, X-Men Destiny, The Sandman, The Box/Ritualyst, and Siren in the Maelstrom (the latter three titles were projects never released, or even officially announced).[12]