Epic Games’ line of Unreal Engines is one of the world’s most widely used game engines. Originally built in 1998 for its FPS Unreal, the engine has since went through 3 iterations and been used in more than 70 games. With Unreal Engine 3 being used for many upcoming projects, you would think the folks at Epic Games are rolling in the licensing checks; but not everyone is happy. Epic’s lead designer, Clifford Bleszinski (or CliffyB to the fans), exclaimed some disdain for the constant licensing of the Unreal Engine 3 for only FPSs. "It’s possible to do anything with this technology; it’s very flexible technology. Because of the fact that we at Epic happen to love shooters and happen to be very good at shooters those are the games we make. You can do some amazing things with it. Developers need to get their heads together and figure out what kind of interesting things you can do with it."
While its roots are in the FPS genre, there have been some companies licensing the Unreal Engine 3 for non-FPS games. Probably one of the biggest such incidents took place back in January when Square Enix licensed the Unreal Engine 3 for future titles. Other companies that have licensed the engine include Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment for a planned MMORPG based on the TV series Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis; Koei for Fatal Inertia — a racing game — and EA for various unnamed projects. At least Cliffy must have been happy to see that the first game to use the engine, RoboBlitz, was a third-person puzzle game.
