Silicon Knights lawsuit has $1 of damages at stake

Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in 2007 for "technical problems" with the now widely-adopted Unreal Engine. The Too Human developer had modified the middleware so much that it called it the "Silicon Knights Engine." The original claim asked for $58 million in damages, however after the judge threw out Silicon Knights' "unreliable and speculative" damage assessment, the developer now faces a significantly reduced judgment.

According to court documents, Judge James Dever III got tired of waiting for a breakdown of the supposed damages, with Silicon Knights missing a key deadline earlier this month, The Verge reports. As a result, he made his own determination of the monetary harm incurred: $1.

There's still reason to continue the case, however. If Silicon Knights wins the trial, which is expected to take one more week, it is free to appeal how the damages were calculated. The developer recently laid off a sizable portion of its staff, and claims to be working on a hotly "requested" new title.