Epic Games’ co-founded and president Mark Rein has used Twitter to lambast processor-manufacturing giant Intel for holding back PC innovation.

“For years we tried to convince Intel to fix their graphics but their data said they were good enough,” claimed Rein. “PC innovation suffered for it.”

“Intel still owned the lions’ share of the graphics market with integrated,” he continued. “That’s why their data said it was good enough.”

Rein doesn’t provide an idea of when they attempted to convince Intel to fix their graphics, but it’s an interesting perspective nonetheless — although many modern games sadly no longer push the boundaries of PC gaming, with multiplatform releases meaning a lower-end hardware requirement. Who knows what might have been?

Source: Kotaku

Aw man. Remember when 38 Studios closed down and then most of their staff were picked up by Epic Games to form an ‘Impossible Studio’? It seemed like the end of a painful saga for the Big Huge Games team. Well, unfortunately their troubles aren’t over yet. The entire team has just been fired all over again. Epic founder Tim Sweeney had this to say:

“We’re closing Impossible Studios. When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.”

“In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo. This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.”

Apparently Ken Levine of Irrational Studios has shown interest in recruiting some of the Impossible staff, linking to the Irrational hiring page on Facebook and saying that he is “a huge fan of everything Big Huge ever did.”

Source: Eurogamer

Epic Games President Mike Capps has today announced his decision to step down from his current active role in order to pursue his responsibilities as a father.

“I’m fortunate that with Epic’s success and generosity, I can be a stay at home dad for a while,” says Capps in an official company blog post. “My wife Julianne and I are very happy in Raleigh, and other than cleaning up baby barf, I don’t have much planned. I might do some teaching, spend more time on creative writing, and maybe get more active with a few charities.”

“Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney and other board members asked me to stay on the board, and I’m thrilled to do so as I’m truly excited about our future games and Unreal Engine 4.”

Source: Epic Games

Details from the long-running and expensive legal battle between Silicon Knights and Epic Games over the use of the Unreal Engine continue to come to light, and one of the most interesting revelations is that Silicon may now — at this moment — be attempting to recall all unsold copies of any and all Unreal Engine games and destroy them.

Games affected in this manner include Too Human, the game at the center of this controversy, as well as X-Men: Destiny, The Sandman, The Box/Ritualyst, and Siren in the Maelstrom. Court documents unearthed by NeoGAF user Xenon show that the Canadian company has until December 10 to comply with this direction.

It’s not known how Silicon Knights will be able to get it done: reports indicate the company is being manned by a skeleton staff of five including its chief Dennis Dyack, and the company was recently ordered to pay $4.45 million in damages to Epic after a court ruled that they breached the Unreal Engine license agreement and misappropriated Unreal trade secrets.

Source: Eurogamer

In a shock departure this morning, Cliffy “Cliffy B” Bleszinski has announced his departure from Epic Games, the company in whose success he has played no small part over the last 20 years. In a farewell message posted on the Epic Games website, Cliffy announces his intention to move on to “chart the next stage in his career”.

“I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I have been going non-stop. I literally grew up in this business, as Mike likes to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break.”

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney had some nice things to say about Cliffy as well, saying Cliffy had “grown into a true design luminary,” and that “his contributions to the ‘Unreal’ and ‘Gears’ series have helped shape the game industry into what it is today.”

Where this leaves currently in-development titles like Gears of War: Judgement is not known, but we can assume they probably know what they’re doing by now. Best of luck to Cliffy in his new endeavours!

Source: Epic (Thanks, JaMbO)

Industry veteran Rod Fergusson has jumped ship from Epic Games, where he has spent eight years as an executive producer, notably on the Gears of War franchise. Fergusson announced his surprise departure on Twitter, revealing his new role at Irrational Games. Although Fergusson’s new position at the Boston developer was not made explicit, subsequent comments make it fairly clear he’s working on BioShock: Infinite, which is set to release early next year. A couple of senior staff left Irrational Games earlier in the week; a small mystery which now seems resolved. Before joining Epic, Fergusson began his career in games development at Microsoft, where his first project was Train Simulator.

Source: Twitter

In a heartwarming move, Epic Games have reached out to the majority of the staff affected by the closure of Big Huge Games and scooped them up, to establish a new Baltimore studio and keep the team together. “On Wednesday, the ex-BHG leadership team contacted us,” said Epic president Mike Capps. “They wanted to start a new company and keep together some of the key talent displaced by the layoff, and hoped that they could use an Epic IP as a starting point for a new game.”

“In one of life’s coincidences, Epic’s directors had spent the morning discussing how we’d love to build even more successful projects with our growing team, but that we’d need a dramatic infusion of top talent to do so. Which, we all knew, was impossible. So now we’re planning to start an impossible studio in Baltimore.” Wonderful.

Source: VG247