Crytek employees say they’re not being paid, again

RIP Crytek management.

I really hope crytek doesn't get bought out, however I hope that their staff (excluding managment) get better jobs elsewhere.

 

Dang, time that somebody told Unity Tekonologee, and CryTeko, that there are no functions in C#. -.-

Because other wise if you don't serve a purpose, I will find you and tell you that you are useless.

You can also use the light weight Visual Studio Code. Unity 5.5 now supports it, even with debugging. Eventually I will switch over to Visual Studio Code, too. Visual Studio 2015 is a bit of a fat ass. Like GabeN the first of Steam from the lands of Valve.

I wonder how much money GabeN eats every day. What if a 25 man raid party would take him down? Would he drop legendary items? Or just a crap tone of gold coins?

 

In a twist shocking nobody at all

 

not surprising given the rumours about their financial problems floating around for years.

Guess the deal with amazon was not so great after all
hell, making a deal with Bezos from amazon, the guy who allegedly is squeezing the life out of his own workforce big time, and seems to be able to make a profit on the weirdest things like selling books online for a low price sounds like a bad idea from the start... he obviously knows how to business better than the crytek guys seemingly struggling to stay afloat for years. But that is just me blabbering gibberish to myself as a total business noob

 

http://www.ps4info.de/crytek-entwickler-trennt-sich-von-den-meisten-studios/ ....

---------Translation---------
The German developer is undergoing extensive restructuring. Among other things, one would like to focus on the core content in the future. This means, the focus of the future work lies on premium IPs. Without a doubt the CryEngine. For this reason, external companies are still supplied with corresponding updates. At the same time, this step means that you will be separated from countless studios.

According to the statement, only the studios in Frankfurt am Main and in Kiev remain. The remaining five, including Seoul and Istanbul, will be separated. Crytek, however, stresses the need for a soft transition for the employees and thus to ensure a secure future. Whether each studio is taken over by other companies, however, was not called. Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli said as follows.

"It was not easy for us to go through such changes, and we would like to sincerely thank each and every current and former Crytek employee for their hard work and loyalty to Crytek. These changes are part of several essential steps we are going to take to ensure that Crytek is a healthy and well-positioned studio for the future that empowers and promotes highly-talented developers. The exact reasons for this have been communicated long and in advance to all employees. From now on, our focus will be exclusively on our core competences that Crytek have defined since the beginning: highly-talented employees, technologies at the highest international level and innovative game development. We firmly believe that we are emerging as a more agile and growth-oriented company from this challenging process: set for a successful future. "
The fifth largest German studio for video games has just released the title "Robinson The Journey" for PlayStation VR. In addition, "The Climb" is another project for the Virtual Reality, which was launched this year. However, the two video games should not have provided for very high revenues. Crytek earned his money anyway mainly with the in-house CryEngine. It generated the largest share of sales of almost 70 million Euros in 2014. Over 49 million euros came from the marketing of CryEngine.
----------------------

 

Or perhaps that deal allowed them to do this much, and without it they'd be completely gone? We don't and can't know.

 

Because dropping making games to take on Unity is a sound business decision. This is the beginning of the end for them.

Farewell crytek.

 

It could be wise. There is a lot of power in having a clear focus. Now all thought all developer time all support time, all marketing, etc can be channeled into their game engine. They seem to know how to make a powerful game engine. Maybe their goals were simply too fragmented before to make it easy to bring in new users.

 

I'm sure the deal with Amazon helped big time... probably still is for the future, this downsizing is probably a good thing though, the timing and resulting loss of employees from the other studios wasn't good at all. But focusing on the engine and original ip (hello crysis?) is where it will pay off the most in the longterm and its not like they are not still working on games just not as many and split across that many other studios.

And lets face it VR..The climb and Robinson... that was a gamble with the games they have done for it, they were never going to bring in huge amount of sales given most gamers haven't adopted VR that widely and probably still dont' have plans too in the near future either, so some poor decisions that have lead to this, the engine itself was in a bad shape to compete with UE4/Unity aswel.

Still I'd say Crytek have already made some really good decisions for the engine this year, my favorite being adopting c# phasing out lua while bringing in the new schematyc editor is great step forward. It being similar to blueprints/unity components. Its really just missing the beginning of some sort of gui builder as the current pipeline for it is still an awful relic from the past of using scaleform/flash. Yeh its not really a match for Unity on all fronts especially indie, but its clear to see they know what they are up against if they want to bring more developers over to using it in the future instead. I really wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a very good engine worth using over UE4/Unity for any developer in the next year or so. Not to say it would be great for every project but certainly worth looking at more so then Cryengine ever has been in the past. When before really only a large studio or small group of more talented and prior knowledge users of Cryengine would go with it before.

 

Maybe. But I'm not sure there is space in the market for another engine. Unity is the 800-pound gorilla. Its going to take a heck of a lot of money and marketing to carve out a space. If you don't like Unity, there is Unreal. Both Unity and Unreal are essentially free to develop in, with generous licensing terms once you start selling product.

Cry Engine on the other hand seems to be a running joke in the industry. Its universally hailed as pretty, but its uncertain if it can actually be used to make games. What's the point of a game engine that can't make games?

If CryTek were sitting on a financially stable base, and had plenty of cash to burn, I might give them a chance. They could resuscitate the engine, repair its reputation, and make a go of it. But considering they are struggling financially, I doubt it they will have the cash or staying power to make this work. So its basically a move to slow the decline, not a move that will put them in a prime position.

 

You forget one thing. Cryengine runs circles around Unity/UE4 with regards to performance and is capable of graphics quality not matched by the other two. They make some nice improvements to the engine as well.

Let's see what happens. I hope that they won't get out of business because that would be unhealthy for the community and would mean less innovation on the market.

 

"Focus on Premium IPs" doesn't sound they are dropping making games, it sounds like the opposite to me. Whether or not they've learned from "only free to play and VR" is another story though.

 

There is some rumour about Crysis 4, but I think at this point it is just a rumour.

 

I don't see why people are considering Unity to be the end-all of engines. In terms of useability and general upkeep it's definitely unmatched (and this is no small feat for Crytek to match) but they have a long way to go in terms of features. If Cryengine was improved and marketed as the Porsche of game engines (i.e. high performance, sexy and not too hard to handle) I think they'd have a chance especially with established indie studios with experienced devs.

Don't forget, although Unity are doing quite well they have a lot of inertia due to 1) fear of breaking current projects 2) implementing anything that a newbie could not handle and 3) the sheer mass of infrastructure - for example supporting all the platforms that they currently do. They take their time adding stuff and improving the engine, which in many ways is a good thing but something Crytek could possibly take advantage of.

One thing that strikes me as very smart (from what I hear) is that Cryengine support is very good - it shows they know what is wrong with the engine (useability) and are ready to buffer it up with tech support while they presumably go about fixing things.

Of course, Cryengine have Unreal to compete with in that space as well, so there's that.

 

Sure. Not going to argue there. However both Unity and Unreal run rings around it in terms of delevloper performance.

Plus the fact that Unity has employees everywhere. Unreal is getting to be the same way. I can get a casual chat with either company if I feel inclined. Cry Tek just doesn't have the cash to set up that sort of market presence.

CryEngine might stay viable as a nieche engine for particular types of games. But it's not going to go mainstream.

 

Well CryTek used to

 

Hmm... I'm not so sure about that. I admittedly haven't heard a lot about it from experienced devs for ages, but back when it was first becoming available to the simulation/serious game crowd I was hearing great things about it. In particular, I remember seeing editor demos where people were throwing together sweet looking environments for training scenarios in munites.

To be fair, that doesn't mean that the rest of a game will be similarly quick and easy to put together, and from what I have heard recently the pipelines for stuff like art assets are rather strict. My guess, though, is that it's because the engine is designed around large studio workflows rather than because it's poorly designed.

 

Correct to call me out. I haven't used the engine myself either.

A more accurate statement would be "It has a poor reputation for developer performance in the local small studio/indie community I hang out with."

Lol, true. But they have never made it to my part of the world. I catch up on a semi regular basis with the local Unity rep. I know there is an Unreal rep available to me if I decide to go that way. I don't think Cry Tek even knows my country exists.

 

Yeah, me too. I just don't put much stock in that, since I don't think it's tools and workflows are designed for that use case.

To be honest I was stoked when Lumberyard appeared because it looked like it'd be a great fit for a current project. It still could be, but the prototype is going so well in Unity (far better than I expected given the nature of the game) I'd be hard pressed to change.

 

Any news of studio(s) closing is unfortunate. I wish the best of luck to those recently made job-less and a swift success in finding new employment in the games industry! They are a talented and skilled bunch so i'm sure they will have no problems.

 

True dat... we don't know just how much they have been in the red. Still, I would be interested as to WHY they got this much in the red... did they predict more sales on their engine and invested too much (seeing how not too many big AAA studios seem to roll CryEngine as of lately)? Was it their own games which didn't sell enough copys (given that they have always been at least somewhat successfull at generating hype and shifting some numbers, I doubt it)?

Oh, almost forgot: the Cry* games are now developed by other companies than CryTek AFAIK. At least Far Cry is. Did they sell the rights? Does CryTek no longer get any money for Far Cry or Crysis games? Could that have contributed to their financial problems?

 

Never said they were, but do you want to take a gamble? Be mid way through a project and they pull support?

Can't deny it, I love the way CE is heading. With the component infrastructure / C# etc. ultimatley it seems the goal is a fully real-time UE / Unity hybrid. The perfect balance would be the power / flexibility / logic of UE4 with the ease of use / simplified nature or Unity.

They already have the rendering and toolsets down for the most part, it seems they did things the other way round. They built all the advanced stuff in first and skipped the basics, so Unity is the opposite of CE and UE's somewhere in the middle. They've done the really hard part, so it's something to watch out for at least.

It just needs to "get there" before it's too late, then hopefully they can gain some momentum and start getting subs in to fund even more development. Also stop doing silly things like locking subs into steam, not being able to publish standalone versions etc.

 

Not sure if it's a sign of anything, since they had to change so much anyway, but it seems Star Citizen are switching to Lumberyard.

 

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/363973/lumberyard-sc-has-changed-game-engine
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-citizen-switches-game-engines-after-years-of-/1100-6446503/
http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/23/14062698/star-citizen-amazon-game-engine

 

Does anyone actually expect that game to be finished though?

 

Not sure, something should come out of it though.

 

Honestly, I expect Star Citizen will get released after they run out of money. When a bunch of people give a bunch of money to a game designer to build his big audacious dream game, you pretty much expect the game designer to build until the money runs out.

 

They tried C#, but the language is barrely supported, there is no tutorials like Unity ones.
I played with Lumberyard and they seem to do lot better with new Entity system, Message Bus and Lua for indies.
Until they revamp the editor tools and outdated workflow , and make C# a priority and tutorials, i am not sure they will get more attraction. They are still today too much focused on C++ for experienced people.
The best switch they can do is making AAA games, this is what they are good at.

 

Actually their FBX importer is way ahead of Lumberyard's one. They support static meshes and full animated characters with bones constrains support. AFAIK Lumberyard's FBX importer can only import static meshes.

After all they might do just fine with a $500mln check.
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/55627/crytek-receive-500m-investment-turkish-gov/index.html

In my opiniom from all the engines with source code access I like where Cryengine is heading right now. Their entity system with plugin support is a really good architecture.

 

I'm getting Duke Nukem Forever flashbacks.

 

Sheesh... http://www.dailysabah.com/technolog...ompany-crytek-to-invest-500-million-in-turkey

 

Hope they aren't doing that while delaying salaries.

 

Yeah there are, the official documentation mentions that the term is interchangeably used with methods, they're the same thing in C# land.

 

Announcement that Turkish government will invest $500 million into Crytek:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/55627/crytek-receive-500m-investment-turkish-gov/index.html

Announcement that Crytek will invest $500 million into Turkey:
http://www.dailysabah.com/technolog...ompany-crytek-to-invest-500-million-in-turkey

That is a very weird announcement, even for Crytek. I wonder if one or both of these links are fake news.

 

My bet is the first one is correct,
if crytek had $500 mil to begin with they wouldn't be in this mess.

 

Both could be true. Turkey has some weird cyber border rules. And some major aspirations to be a player in the global information stage. So it's entirely possible they would give money to a company on the proviso that it all got spent in their country.

 

Yeah, that is possible.

 

Yep true, but from Cryteks perspective it might be a bit shaky, Turkey is setting for some harsh geopolitical play over next years, not the kind of country to set stable company in.

 

Has turkey ever been stable? Maybe during the time of the Ottoman Empire?

It's probably let a case of any port for a sinking ship. CryTech likely can't find German or US investors. And Turkey can't find willing tech companies.

 

Yeh good point.

 

Still... half a billion usd?

Sorta reminds me of Kingdom of Amalur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios

 

Sounds pretty similar to me. I'm fairly convinced something similar will happen with Cry Tek. They used to make some good games, and used to have a kick ass engine to do it with. But neither is true anymore.

 

The founding brothers are all Turkish, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was relevant. (A grant program for Turkish citizens and tech for example.)

Story was somewhat generic, but the combat system was top notch. They just made the classic aspiring indie pitfall of going too big too soon.

 

They still have the best engine.

 

There's no "the best engine".

The reason why I remembered of Kingdom's of Amalur, because the studio in question apparently took a $75 mil loan, produced Kingdom of Amalur and then blew the rest trying to create a killer mmo called Copernicus.

I haven't watched the story, so I don't remember all the details, but I heard it was quite messy.
For example:
http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/8/11178282/38-studios-scandal-loan-lawsuit-sec-wells-fargo
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/footage-of-defunct-38-studios-mmo-project-copernic/1100-6421062/

 

True, what I meant is they have an engine that is really good in rendering high quality AAA assets with real time GI. My point was that they still have an engine that produces images that I didn't see in other engines apart from Lumberyard obviously ;-)

 

It's nice but I've yet to see mobile titles run well

Also, yeah. Most of it is still great artwork.

 

On mobile there can be only one king - Unity

 

Yeah and I don't feel too secure using engines that don't have apparent financial stability. Engines these days are really actually about the forums too. The whole dev culture is important to sustain enough users.

 

They have the prettiest engine. There is a difference.

An engines job is to make games right? So the best engine would be the one that makes games the best? Check out the list of titles made with Cry Engine versus the list made with Unity or Unreal.

Cry Engine does a poor job of letting people finish games. Even if the ones that do come out of it look pretty.