Financially troubled publisher Midway now has someone to blame for all its problems – Epic’s Unreal Engine 3. Variety talked with some ex-employees of the company who threw light on the use of Unreal Engine 3 that caused much of the company’s woes. Here’s a bit:

"The mistake we made was, instead of just taking the base Unreal 3 engine that ‘Gears of War’ was made on and building games off of that, we let our tech and product development guys try to really modify the engine to add all these diff things," one ex-employee told me. "It was a ton of new technology which they just weren’t capable of doing. It put all the games way behind schedule."

Even though Midway invested millions in building a common tech base for all its studios, apparently they all had to adapt UE3 for each project, which meant they couldn’t share resources in a timely manner, so none of the promised benefits materialized. Making the code work for PS3 was particularly hard, sources said, and so games just weren’t coming out. Look at the first half of 2007, when all Midway shipped was "Lord of the Rings Online" for Turbine, or the first half of this year, when all it shipped was "Unreal Tournament III" for Epic.

Many publishers and studios have licensed Unreal Engine 3 for use in their games. One notable exception is Capcom, who has built its own engine to power its multiplatform releases.

Red Mile Entertainment has announced that it has licensed Unreal Engine 3 for use in developing the upcoming Sin City game.

“The Unreal Engine is one of the most technically advanced engines on the market and is a perfect fit for our Sin City video games,” said Glenn Wong, president and COO for Red Mile. “The engine has powered several of the best-selling games of all time and I am very glad we have the opportunity to arm our developers with such a world-class product.”

The game is expected sometime in 2008.

Illuminate Labs, creators of rendering and lighting technology for next-gen games, has announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with Epic Games, one that sees the incorporation of the company’s Beast, a global illumination system, into Unreal Engine 3. Under the terms of the agreement, Illuminate will join Epic’s Integrated Partners Program (IPP) and its technology will be immediately available to any publishers or developers that license the engine.

The inclusion of Beast will allow artists to seamlessly add global illumination to development environments using the Unreal editor. It will also allow them to bake soft shadows with transparency and get skylights from HDR images.

“We are very proud to be part of Epic’s Integrated Partners Program,” said Magnus Wennerholm, chief executive officer of Illuminate Labs. “Visual quality and cost effectiveness in the production process are key issues to all games studios, and with this partnership UE3 customers will benefit from easy access to our advanced lighting technology.”

New developer Faramix has announced that it has licensed Unreal Engine 3 and that it is now working on The End, a first-person shooter planned for release in 2009 for PC and Xbox 360. Though the announcement doesn’t offer much on the game, this job posting does. Here’s the scoop:

Miles Caden is haunted by his past. Once a proud military officer and happy family man, he now lives in a perpetual state of regret. Not long after the fateful accident that left him and his best friend dishonorably discharged, he lost his wife to a tragic car accident. Depressed and desolate, he slips into a life of alcoholism. Only his cousin, Chaz, took him in, as he was forsaken by the rest of his family. Nothing seemed to be going right, until one day Chaz offered Miles the chance to get back his dignity. A chance to pull his life together. But nothing comes for free, and Miles has to decide how much he’s willing to lose in order to regain his former self.

A placeholder site is now live, though it doesn’t offer anything at the moment.

Demiurge Studios has been enlisted by Kaos Studios to optimize the gameplay experience in Frontlines: Fuel of War, its upcoming Unreal Engine 3-powered action shooter. The aforementioned studio has extensive experience with the engine, making them a natural fit to polish up the game, according to Kaos Studios.

“Kaos has put together an incredible game in Frontlines: Fuel of War,” said Al Reed, Studio Director at Demiurge. “We’re excited to use our know-how to help them smooth out such an enormous gamespace.”

Frontlines: Fuel of War is slated for release this Fall.

Spanish developer Tragnarion Studios today announced The Scourge Project, a story-driven FPS game built upon co-operative squad play, where up to 4 players can play together. It will use Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, and is due for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2008.

“We’ve been amazed at the speed and quality of results on Unreal. We’ve only had the engine for a couple of months, yet we’ve already been able to build a great-looking, fully playable prototype, which we’ll soon show to publishers, featuring our innovative narrative system for multiple players and our unique co-op focused game play mechanics. Every single feature we want is easily implemented in Unreal - for all the major high-end platforms.”

Mark Rein, VP at Epic said, “When we saw the demo that Tragnarion produced, we were really impressed with the progress they had made in such a short time. The high quality visuals, innovative game features and co-operative story have come together in only a few months. It made us very proud to see how quickly they were able to learn Unreal Engine 3 and we can’t wait to get a look at this title again in a few more months.”

The official website is already up, offering a description and some screenshots from the game, which are mirrored below:

Following word that Silicon Knights, the studio behind Too Human, had sued Epic Games over Unreal Engine 3, alleging that Epic had failed to deliver features by set deadlines, Shacknews went to various developers for reactions to the issue as well as their experience with the engine itself. It is an eye opener.

First off, many developers and studios have had problems with the engine, with Josh Jeffcoat (Gearbox Software) going on to say that some parts of it are “dog slow” and that it has “issues”; however, he concluded that Epic was always honest with their work and that such limitations were there from day one. Another unnamed developer went on record, saying that Epic was late at delivering key features, but that it was upfront and honest about its doings.

Some other developers praised the company, having had no problems with them while some others criticized Epic for its tardiness. Many developers wished to stay off record, with Shacknews noting that many others have had negative experiences with the company.

Through a brief press release, Nikitova announced that it has started work on a *secret* Unreal Engine 3 powered title. No other details were disclosed.

Increasing Unreal Engine 3’s popularity even further, Vogster Entertainment announced that it has licensed the game engine to develop next-gen MMOG Crimecraft. Well, what exactly is Crimecraft? “It [Crimecraft] is going to shake the global video game industry with its innovative features and characters actions,” says Arseniy Nazarenko, the game’s producer. “Vogster has set upon an ambitious game-development course and are preparing to launch Crimecraft, our own unique and exciting MMO game, in 2008.”

There you have it! Oh yeah, the game is multiplatform, too.

Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is spreading its reach everywhere it seems: Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has announced that it will use the next-gen technology to develop Stargate Worlds and future multi-platform titles.

Stargate Worlds is based on the popular science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. It is a MMORPG which is scheduled to launch in late 2007.

Most probably swimming in their swimming pool filled with cash from all their licensing deals, Epic Games announced that EA has licensed its Unreal Engine 3 for use with several of its next-generation games. No specific titles were announced, though details are expected soon.

Even Sony couldn’t resist licensing Epic’s Unreal Engine 3: Sony Online Entertainment has announced that they have licensed the game engine technology for development of some next-generation games, including the DC Comics-based game currently under development SOE-Austin.

No other details were revealed.

And another for Epic Games! The company has gotten another licensee for its Unreal Engine 3 technology - THQ. The publisher plans on using UE3 in next-gen console and PC games, though no projects were mentioned by name.

Planning an expanded presence at GDC 2006 is Epic Games, who announces that it will be showcasing Unreal Engine 3 at the event as well as presenting key technical achievements over the past year.

The studio will demonstrate the engine within their ExpoSuite, ES128, located in the main exhibition hall. Epic will be showcasing PS3 and Xbox 360 support, FaceFX cinema-quality facial animation, new physics-based animation and other technical stuff.

The company will also include dedicated space in the Career Pavilion to “search for the industry’s best game developers.”