Development studio Silicon Knights, which is currently hard at work on Xbox 360 shooter Too Human, has filed a lawsuit against Gears of War developer Epic Games which alleges that the company failed to deliver a working version of its Unreal Engine 3 – the tool kit being used to build Too Human.

Gamasutra reports that Silicon Knights believes that it has lost revenues as a result of delays experienced in the development of Too Human – delays that it blames on Unreal engine 3. Next-Gen quotes the lawsuit as stating:

“Epic violated the Agreement with Silicon Knights by, among other things, failing to provide a working game engine, which has caused Silicon Knights to experience considerable losses and ultimately has forced Silicon Knights to spend its limited time and resources on building its own game engine rather than in developing its video game.

“Epic never intended to deliver Unreal Engine 3 as a fully functional game engine as promised.”

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack added: “We strongly believe that from the perspective of someone waiting for a game engine that Epic promised it would deliver almost two years ago, it seems pretty clear that Gears was built on the backs of the Unreal Engine licensees.

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“We certainly stand by our allegations in the lawsuit that instead of using our licensing fees to develop and support the Unreal Engine 3, Epic used that money to build Gears.

“We have had extensive problems with the Unreal Engine 3 that Epic has been unwilling or unable to rectify.  For more than a year, we have been trying to reach an agreement with Epic to resolve these issues without resorting to litigation, but were unable to come to reasonable terms with Epic.

“Regrettably, we are now forced to go to court in order to achieve satisfaction.  We remain hopeful, however, that we can reach a reasonable business resolution with Epic at some point.”