Crytek Announces Five of Seven Studios "will not remain within Crytek" - Polidicks

[quote]Less than one week after it came to light that a former Crytek employee was raising funds to finance legal action over unpaid wages, the company has announced plans to close five of its seven studios, so that it can "refocus on its core strengths of developing innovative games and game-development technology." Crytek will maintain its operations in Frankfurt and Kiev, while studios in Budapest, Sofia, Seoul, Shanghai, and Istanbul "will not remain within Crytek," according to the announcement. It's not made clear whether those operations will be shuttered outright, sold off, or given the opportunity to continue to operate independently, as the release says only that "management has put plans into action to secure jobs and to ensure a smooth transition and stable future." The closures come in the wake of rumors that Crytek has once again been struggling to pay its employees. Former FX artist Ludviq Lindqvist, who quit the company and announced his intent to file a lawsuit after going without pay for two months, said in his crowdfunding campaign (which now appears to have been canceled) that salaries for all Crytek employees have been arriving late since May 2016. Complaints about late or missed payments have also been posted on Imgur and Glassdoor, and sent anonymously to Kotaku. "These changes are part of the essential steps we are taking to ensure Crytek is a healthy and sustainable business moving forward that can continue to attract and nurture our industry’s top talent. The reasons for this have been communicated internally along the way," Crytek managing director Avni Yerli said. "Our focus now lies entirely on the core strengths that have always defined Crytek—world-class developers, state-of-the-art technology, and innovative game development, and we believe that going through this challenging process will make us a more agile, viable, and attractive studio, primed for future success.”[/quote] [url=http://www.pcgamer.com/crytek-eliminates-five-studios-after-struggling-to-pay-employees/]PC Gamer[/url]

Does this mean we won't see the next "Bestest Benchmark game to ever exist" Crysis 4? Either way, this is indeed a terrible loss. Sucks to see Crytek doing so badly. Then again they did some very weird business decisions. Especially with the CryEngine and how they decided to give it out for free for no good reason. Then again, they also seemingly didn't pay their employers on time or in some cases not at all either. So I don't know if I should be that sad about them.

Rip in piece. Moving away from PC (because of the piracy bogeyman of course) was a mistake, Crysis is still their best selling game as well as best game overall.

This sucks, their tech was amazing and to this day we still don't have a game where the vegetation is anywhere near as good as it is in Crysis, not even the weak sequels. Games aside, they released a movie making tool which allows people to render amazingly beautiful films in real time [quote]Especially with the CryEngine and how they decided to give it out for free for no good reason.[/quote] They did that because UE4 did it. Cryengine might have been able to survive if it didn't cost so much to license and if the documentation wasn't poor

Tough news for Crytek and the staff. Crytek's really just been shitting the bed for several years now, and it's kind of sad. I think Unity and UE4 are stealing their lunch, because there aren't many games using Cryengine anymore. On the other hand, this may be very good news for Star Citizen. After Crytek had to run a bunch of downsizing on its Frankfurt office including a bunch of core Cryengine engineers, the SC devs opened up a new office in Frankfurt and hired most of the Crytek layoffs (including the guy that wrote the character animation system IIRC). [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdCFTF8j7yI"]The results have been dramatic.[/URL] Without them, that realtime planetary demo probably wouldn't have happened for another two years at least, if at all. Crytek isn't closing their Frankfurt office, but maybe key people from the other offices will want to/be able to move to one of the areas with an SC studio (LA, Austin, Manchester, Frankfurt) and will get snapped up. Lord knows they need all the Cryengine experts they can get. But they can't possibly hire everyone that Crytek's letting go of, so a lot of people will be out of work from this. Good luck to all of them.

Crytek is a good example of how poor management decisions that could've been easily avoided fucked over many people.

all you had to do was make timesplitters 4, crytek [editline]20th December 2016[/editline] or a remastered collection of ts 1-3

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;51557340]all you had to do was make timesplitters 4, crytek [editline]20th December 2016[/editline] or a remastered collection of ts 1-3[/QUOTE] This. I hate when companies scoop up title rights and never touch them.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;51557340]all you had to do was make timesplitters 4, crytek [editline]20th December 2016[/editline] or a remastered collection of ts 1-3[/QUOTE] I would straight up kill people for a remaster of Future Perfect.

[QUOTE=FezianEmperor;51557224]Does this mean we won't see the next "Bestest Benchmark game to ever exist" Crysis 4? Either way, this is indeed a terrible loss. Sucks to see Crytek doing so badly. Then again they did some very weird business decisions. Especially with the CryEngine and how they decided to give it out for free for no good reason. Then again, they also seemingly didn't pay their employers on time or in some cases not at all either. So I don't know if I should be that sad about them.[/QUOTE] EA owns the Crysis IP.

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;51557340]all you had to do was make timesplitters 4, crytek [editline]20th December 2016[/editline] or a remastered collection of ts 1-3[/QUOTE] The worst thing is that the new Homefront has iirc a couple of levels from TS in it so you can see what could've been on PC but never actually have the full thing.

Following the development of Star Citizen has taught me that while Cry Engine looks nice, its actually pretty terrible to develop for.

Just throw in the goddamn towel already ffs.

[QUOTE=Alxnotorious;51557544]This. I hate when companies scoop up title rights and never touch them.[/QUOTE] There's a fan remake in progress apparently, they asked Crytek and they said "do whatever with the IP as long as you use Cryengine for it", last I checked

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51557324]I think Unity and UE4 are stealing their lunch, because there aren't many games using Cryengine anymore.[/QUOTE] Well, this is what happens when you have shittiest engine documentation ever created and say "We will help you only if you buy full engine license. What? You want to buy it? Too bad, we don't like your game, bye" to every indie developer (who paid for the indie license btw) when they ask you for help.

[QUOTE=Saxon;51557871]Following the development of Star Citizen has taught me that while Cry Engine looks nice, its actually pretty terrible to develop for.[/QUOTE] Considering the amount of re-engineering they did up to this point they might as well call it their own engine the same way Source Engine is Quake Engine at its heart.

[QUOTE=jonoPorter;51557928]Considering the amount of re-engineering they did up to this point they might as well call it their own engine the same way Source Engine is Quake Engine at its heart.[/QUOTE] They do. They've now used "StarEngine" in official communications after using it internally and on Friday livestreams for like a year. One Frankfurt dev who was ex-Crytek was asked in some interview how much has been rewritten, and while acknowledging that it's a difficult question to answer because it's such a complex beast, he said roughly 50% of CryEngine has now been rewritten in StarEngine. And they're not done modifying the engine by a long shot.

[QUOTE=Megalan;51557924]Well, this is what happens when you have shittiest engine documentation ever created and say "We will help you only if you buy full engine license. What? You want to buy it? Too bad, we don't like your game, bye" to every indie developer (who paid for the indie license btw) when they ask you for help.[/QUOTE] Well to be fair I have heard that they're attempting to improve the documentation as well as make formal tutorials on how to do various things within the engine. I'm not saying they're faultless but it's better then just ignoring the problem and/or saying people are just imagining things.

[QUOTE=zizzleplix;51558089]Well to be fair I have heard that they're attempting to improve the documentation as well as make formal tutorials on how to do various things within the engine. I'm not saying they're faultless but it's better then just ignoring the problem and/or saying people are just imagining things.[/QUOTE] I've heard that too for over a year now

TIMESPLITTERS :cry:

[QUOTE=zizzleplix;51558089]Well to be fair I have heard that they're attempting to improve the documentation as well as make formal tutorials on how to do various things within the engine. I'm not saying they're faultless but it's better then just ignoring the problem and/or saying people are just imagining things.[/QUOTE] They spewed the same crap four years ago when I first tried getting into it, and it hasn't gotten any better. Working with Cryengine is a nightmare on nearly every front.

[QUOTE=Megalan;51557924]Well, this is what happens when you have shittiest engine documentation ever created and say "We will help you only if you buy full engine license. What? You want to buy it? Too bad, we don't like your game, bye" to every indie developer (who paid for the indie license btw) when they ask you for help.[/QUOTE] Oh, they also hate any other software that isn't a industry leading software. They pretty much hate Blender3D and don't want to give an official plugin for that to export models with full animations etc. Might have been finally done by the community but I remember that their official response was always: Go buy 3DS Max or Maya. (In comparision, Unity and UE4 work flawlessly with Blender, that gets you a lot more people to work with your Engine.) Anyways, as people have pointed out they really are at their own fault here. A simple TimeSplitters remake of 1-3 for PC (and console) would probably make a ton of money. I would bet even a new Crysis wouldn't have hurt. A new TimeSplitters would also gotten all my money. It is a shame that Crytek goes downhill really.

[QUOTE=Megalan;51557924]Well, this is what happens when you have shittiest engine documentation ever created and say "We will help you only if you buy full engine license. What? You want to buy it? Too bad, we don't like your game, bye" to every indie developer (who paid for the indie license btw) when they ask you for help.[/QUOTE] The shitty engine documentation is also what probably steered many potential devs away from CryEngine when modding was such a hassle.

[QUOTE=hippowombat;51558240]They spewed the same crap four years ago when I first tried getting into it, and it hasn't gotten any better. Working with Cryengine is a nightmare on nearly every front.[/QUOTE] And that's why I said it still has a ways to go. But even at that note, I stand corrected.

Man I hope some company buys the TimeSplitters IP

[QUOTE=zizzleplix;51558376]And that's why I said it still has a ways to go. But even at that note, I stand corrected.[/QUOTE] Sorry, didn't mean to sound rude. I'm all for advocating patience with developers, as I understand how frustrating and stressful it can be when people shout demands for stuff, but much of the documentation hasn't changed/been iterated on in multiple [I]years[/I], something that seems silly for a AAA company. Granted they're headed downhill at this point, but even in 2012, the Cryengine 3 SDK had been out for 3 years, and documentation was just as poorly written/indexed and sparse as it is today. They don't really have a ways to go, they have nearly the whole way to go on the documentation front. In all seriousness they shouldn't have opened it up as a public SDK if they didn't plan on iterating on documentation and catering to indies, things that Unity and UE4 excel at. Instead, they should have offered licensing to bigger studios, so that they could offer guidance on a case by case basis, which is basically what they already do now, with the addition of leaving indies out in the cold.

This is sad, but not exactly surprising. All the games over the past decade they have made were the mediocre Crysis sequels, Ryse (which is better suited as a benchmark than as a game), F2P garbage, and VR games (which not many people are buying because not very many people own VR headsets, not to mention none of them are for the Vive). All that, combined with the low adoption rates of CryEngine, they probably weren't raking in mad amounts of cash, especially with how many employees they had (according to Wikipedia, they had [I]700[/I] in 2014).

[QUOTE=rndgenerator;51557333]Crytek is a good example of how poor management decisions that could've been easily avoided fucked over many people.[/QUOTE] The Yerlis are great at making rendering engines and very little else. Their business decisions from pirating all their support software to spending money on marketing firms instead of their employees and continually failing to provide ANY kind of written or logistical support for their own engine have been clusterfuck decisions since day one. This is why publishers remain in charge of game development, and it's not doing anyone in the industry any good long term.

[QUOTE=hippowombat;51558430]Sorry, didn't mean to sound rude. I'm all for advocating patience with developers, as I understand how frustrating and stressful it can be when people shout demands for stuff, but much of the documentation hasn't changed/been iterated on in multiple [I]years[/I], something that seems silly for a AAA company. Granted they're headed downhill at this point, but even in 2012, the Cryengine 3 SDK had been out for 3 years, and documentation was just as poorly written/indexed and sparse as it is today. They don't really have a ways to go, they have nearly the whole way to go on the documentation front. In all seriousness they shouldn't have opened it up as a public SDK if they didn't plan on iterating on documentation and catering to indies, things that Unity and UE4 excel at. Instead, they should have offered licensing to bigger studios, so that they could offer guidance on a case by case basis, which is basically what they already do now, with the addition of leaving indies out in the cold.[/QUOTE] It's sad really. I think indies could do a lot with the engine if Crytek stepped up their game and give the engine good documentation (and full Blender support). Maybe if they opened up a wiki where trusted members of the community could contribute to it (I feel it would speed up the documentation process).

Whether you like the company or not, you at least have to agree that the "tek" in Crytek is pretty goddamn impressive and beneficial to the industry as a whole. It's just a shame that its lacking documentation means that it's not really accessible to upcoming indie devs without shelling out for support from Crytek themselves. CEV seems to be fixing this slowly, but surely however, so if Crytek can manage to stay afloat, who knows. It actually might take off.