Last December, Epic Games’ former president Mike Capps announced he was retiring from the company, but would stay on the board of directors in an advisory capacity. According to a post on Joystiq, however, his tenure even in that role has ended.

Capps wrote on his Facebook page last night:

“When we announced that I wanted to transition out of my leadership role at Epic, the plan was for a continued but less active role, service on the board of directors, and ideally, being that eccentric semi-retired guy who still comes to playtests and gold parties. I’m sad to say that plans have changed, and as of February 11th, I’m no longer affiliated with Epic Games. (I thought it best for Epic’s staff to hear it first, and the announcement was made today, so now I’m sharing this more widely.)

I have many wonderful memories of my time at Epic, and I wish my friends there all the best in their future projects.

So what’s next for me? Games have been so good to me, and I’m delighted to have the time to give back. I’m a member of several game industry boards, and I’m proud to serve as an advocate for our art in Washington. I’m considering seats on a few company and advisory boards, as well as options for teaching at one of the world-class universities in the North Carolina Triangle area. And mostly, I’m focused on being a new dad in a few short weeks. Time is flying by, and I’ve still got a dozen games I want to play before the UnSleep begins!”

The statement seems to raise a few questions as to what’s happened between Capps and the company he founded, though at the very least, the split seems relatively amicable and drama-free (certainly on the face of it, I should point out).

Epic Games released this statement on the new status quo at the Unreal Engine studio:

“When Mike Capps retired last year, he stayed on the board in an advisory role. As we’ve been mapping out the future for the new Epic Games, we decided it was best to get a fresh start with the new management. We thank Mike for his years of service at Epic and we wish him well in retirement and fatherhood.”

So there we go. Where will Capps show up next? What will the new Capps-free Epic Games look like? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Via Joystiq

Canadian developer Silicon Knights can’t catch a break: this morning, Joystiq reports that the studio behind last year’s flop X-Men: Destiny has been ordered by courts to recall and destroy every copy of its games that were made using Epic’s Unreal Engine. The order is part of the judgment against Silicon Knights in their failed bid to sue Epic over allegations of breach of contract concerning their license of the Unreal Engine. After many years, Silicon Knights lost the case and was ordered to pay Unreal $4.5 million in damages—a number that’s been increased to $9 million.

According to the post, the court’s destroy order calls for all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny to be recalled, while all code the developer’s built utilizing the Unreal Engine must also be destroyed. Unfinished projects, too, are included in the destroy order…all conditions of Epic’s countersuit against Silicon Knights, which alleged that SK had illegally created games using the Unreal Engine 3. Earlier this year, Silicon Knights lost its suit, while Epic won theirs.

Said Epic Games on the ruling:

“Epic Games appreciates the court’s careful consideration of the motion and is cgratified by the order.”

Clearly this is yet another blow to the Canadian developer that many speculate is already at death’s door. I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard that the company was filing for bankruptcy before the end of the year. “This is the way the world ends: This is the way the world ends: This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Via Joystiq

This morning, news broke that Tencent Holdings, an internet service company that provides social networks, multiplayer gaming, and e-commerce—and which ranks third in size behind Google and Amazon worldwide—has purchased a minority stake in Epic Games. The details of the deal aren’t known right now, but the partnership will give Epic a strong foothold in its plans to expand business into the People’s Republic of China. In addition, according to a post on Gamasutra about the deal, this marks the first investment Epic has received from outside the company.

Said David Wallerstein, senior executive vice president of Tencent:

“We’ve developed a huge amount of respect for the Epic team for many years now, as dedicated players of Epic’s games and as licensees of Epic’s Unreal Engine technology. We have a lot that we can learn from each other, and we look forward to supporting the Epic team as they embark on their next phase of gaming innovation across both emerging and familiar platforms.”

A post on Joystiq about the deal also points out that Tencent made a similar sort of purchase in 2011, when it bought a minority stake in Riot Games, the makers of League of Legends. That deal allowed riot to continue independent operations. Considering that Epic seems to have been pretty stable with its various offerings, this deal only seems to be further strengthening one of the industry’s powerhouses.

Also: Tencent’s mascot is a penguin! Adorable!

Via Gamasutra and Joystiq

The long-simmering lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic Games—makers of Too Human and the Unreal Engine, respectively—has ended, according to a Tweet from Epic’s Mark Rein.

According to press release published by Epic Games about the case’s end, the jury in the suit found for Epic in their counterclaims against Silicon Knights, determining that SK had “breached the license agreement, misappropriated Epic’s trade secrets, and infringed Epic’s copyrights in the Unreal Engine 3 code.”

The suit was initially brought against Epic by Silicon Knights when the Canadian developer alleged that Epic failed to provide adequate support for Unreal Engine 3, which they were trying to use to make Too Human. Silicon Knights claimed that Epic’s alleged failure caused them to write their own engine for the game, which drove up costs on the game’s development. The press release says that the court had “thrown out Silicon Knights’ fraud claims after nine days of testimony.”

Overall, it’s not been a good year for Silicon Knights.

In about a month and a half, Silicon Knights will finally face Epic Games in court over allegations that Epic offered no support for their Unreal Engine, forcing Silicon Knights to start from scratch with a new engine for the Xbox 360 flop Too Human. Denis Dyack, Silicon Knights’ president and founder, is looking forward to when the two companies will meet in front of a judge on May 14, since he believes that he’ll finally lay bare all of the problems his company experienced in trying to work with Epic.

“Bottom-line, and this is pretty public, we went through hell last generation [Xbox 360 and PS3] by trying to adopt the Unreal Engine. It hurt us so dramatically that it affected us a lot, all the way through. You know, we’re hoping to fix that this gen. We’ve suffered a lot, that’s all I can say,” he told GamesIndustry.

As to whether or not Too Human’s bad reputation is deserved, Dyack pins the blame solely on Epic’s lack of support, explaining that having to rewrite the game’s engine is the reason for the game’s poor reception and sales:

“You know, in some ways Too Human got a bad rap, and there are all kinds of details. A lot of what happened with Too Human is going to come out in the court case […]So as an example, this is not known at all—I’ll give you something no one’s ever heard before—but four-player co-op was done in 2008. Details of that and all that stuff will come out [in the court case].”

According to the post, Dyack alleges that Epic was focusing their attention and resources on making developing the Gears of War franchise, leaving Silicon Knights out in the cold when they sought support for their efforts to use the Unreal Engine for Too Human.

Personally, I’m willing to believe that Epic may indeed have dropped the ball in terms of supporting the engine—but at the same time, to blame lack of support as the reason for a game not selling…well, that may be something of a stretch. I don’t know—I never got the chance to play Too Human. I did play X-Men: Destiny, which was developed by Silicon Knights. And that was pretty much hot garbage. I haven’t heard them finding excuses for why that game turned out so bad…but hey, maybe we’ll find out that one’s somehow Epic’s fault too!

All kidding aside, I’m eager to see what kinds of arguments they’ve got. Check back in May for more details from the court case as they begin to come out.

Via GamesIndustry

Earlier this month we reported that Epic Games let the word out that their newest iteration on the Unreal Engine would be seeing the light of day this year. Epic has officially announced that the engine will be showcased next week in San Francisco during GDC 2012.

Within the announcement, Epic stated that it will unveil Unreal Engine 4, the “next-generation game technology”, to “select licensees, partners and prospective customers during the exhibition.”

VP of Epic Games Mark Rein stated his excitement for the debut of their “ass-kicking” new tech:

“What’s really exciting about seeing this love letter to hardware manufacturers is understanding how Unreal Engine goes from iPhone right up to the most ass-kicking PC you can buy that’s hopefully representative of what the next-gen might be. And it’s ready today.”

One thing’s for sure – if they wow the crowds at GDC this year as much as they did last year with the Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan demo, faces might literally melt.

Yes, literally.

[via EuroGamer]

Speaking with G4TV at DICE 2012, Vice President of Epic Games Mark Rein stated that the fourth iteration of the company’s Unreal Engine will be revealed this year.

“People are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4 and how much more profound an effect it will have.”

Further comment was not offered, but more information is expected to surface from the event this week, if not sometime in the near future.

If I’m sure of anything, it’s this: If the Unreal Engine 4 tech demo shows anything close to what was displayed in the U3 tech demo from early last year, it’s going to blow people away.

[via G4TV]

Famed gamed developer Epic Games, the company behind Unreal and Gears of War, has expressed interest in Nintendo’s new HD console. Since the console is on graphical par with the XBOX 360 and PS3, the developer is looking to possibly release future projects on the platform. Epic Games President Mike Capps expressed his history with the Nintendo Wii:

“We haven’t made an official announcement about that platform. And while we loved the Wii, it just wasn’t a fit to make a game that would go across Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii. It just wasn’t possible. So going forward, we’re working with those folks and we’re very interested in the Wii U,” Capps said.

He went on to talk about the process of how Epic Games develops for platforms:

“We find that the best way to support a platform is to be making a game for it and we don’t currently have a game in development for that platform. For example, we don’t officially support Android, although we have demos that work on Android… But we officially support iPhone because we’ve made a game and we know it works. We know how to get through the certification process – we know it could. That’s sort of important to me; as a game developer who’s selling an engine, I want to make sure that I can ship a game on it myself, which is why we have very clear public support of PS3, Xbox 360, PC and iPhone but not as clear when it comes to Android or Wii U,” he said.

An interesting precursor to future development for the Wii U is the fact that Epic’s own Unreal Engine was used to develop many of the games that have been announced for Nintendo’s system.

“At the launch event at E3, some of the products that you saw running on Wii U were based on Unreal Engine technology. So that kind of gives you an idea of where we are in that space. You can certainly use our engine on that platform – it’s a natural fit from a technology perspective,” Capps said. “It opens up some doors that weren’t open before on current generation consoles because it is going to be a powerful box. I’m sure [Epic VP] Mark Rein would love anyone who’s interested to know how official our support is to get in touch with him!”

via IndustryGamers

Developer Zombie Studios announced today that they will be unveiling showing the sequel to Blacklight: Tango Down which is titled Blacklight Retribution. This free-to-play shooter will take advantage of Unreal Engine 3 technology and implement DirectX 11 to give fans an immersive experience. Perfect World Entertainment, in partnership with Zombie Studios, will be publishing the title.

“We’ve wanted to develop a high quality and yet free-to-play first person shooter for years, which is why we’re excited to be teaming up with Perfect World, an online-game developer and operator with more than eight years of experience in the free-to-play space,” said Mark Long, co-CEO of Zombie Studios Inc. “We know how to make thrilling first person shooters and Perfect World have vast experience in publishing various games in different markets. With this alliance of expertise, PC gamers can look forward to a high quality first person shooter that is available for everyone to play.”

Even though Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein is convinced the 3DS can’t handle the Unreal Engine, developers at Ubisoft say they already have the ubiquitous game framework running on the handheld for Splinter Cell 3D.

“The 3DS is powerful, and we are able to run the Unreal engine on this console, which is pretty impressive for a handheld machine, and the 3D doesn’t affect the performance (thanks to my amazing programmers),” Splinter Cell 3D Producer Fabrice Cuny said in an interview with Gamespot. “The architecture is different compared to a Wii or some other platforms that we had to work with here at Ubisoft Montreal.”

Cuny also commented on the process of developing a game on a new platform with rough tools.

“The 3DS can be much more comparable to a platform between a DSi and a Wii. We are able to create games anywhere from a puzzle game to very high-end game such as Splinter Cell 3D,” Cuny said. “The tools on the 3DS were brand new, and with every development phase, we had some tools with bugs and crashes. But with version after version, Nintendo provided us a set of tools and the support to help us debug and optimize the game.”

This contradicts aforementioned statements from Epic’s Rein, who said the following when asked about Unreal on the 3DS.

“There’s only so much time in the day; our engine requires a certain level of hardware capabilities to make our pipeline, our tools work — and we work on the ones that do,” Rein said. “The second Nintendo releases a piece of hardware that can run our engine well, we’ll be on it like water on fish.”

To be fair, Rein is not claiming the 3DS is incapable of running the engine, only that it doesn’t run it without effort. While the folks at Epic may not have enough hours in the day to coax the 3DS into running the engine, Ubisoft may have cracked that nut. Now I wonder — what if Ubisoft sells their functional, modified 3DS engine back to Epic Games? That’d be bonkers.

Either way I bet Splinter Cell 3D is going to look pretty damn sweet, and is expected to release for the 3DS in April 2011.

[via Gamespot, Joystiq]