…or to put it more in marketing speak like the co-founder of Crytek, Avni Yerli put it “We are transitioning to a smaller base to focus on our core strengths.”

The information coming out now is not long after a large blow up in certain media sites over a rumoured Crytek developer in Belgrade saying he hasn’t been paid in around 6 months, and that several other developers in the studio were in the same boat. Yerli mentions focusing on “Innovative games and game-development technology” as the Frankfurt and Kiev studios will be working on, along with “premium IPs” so that means basically working on just the CryEngine only.

Of course the press release is all marketing speak, and I am not one for that sort of “lying and speaking in such a roundabout way that you cannot be pinned on a single subject” type of information giving, but we are basically looking at developers in five studios being given their “So long and thanks for 6 months of free work” cardboard box (which, being the pessimist I am from having dealt with managers, will be deducted from any possible in the utter most random final pay-check.)

We have seen this happen a lot throughout history, and most notably with game development, studios taken under the EA banner, and also with Interplay’s handling of Black Isle after they started to lose money because of the loss of the Star Trek games license. However, a good post on Reddit was commenting how this must be something interesting, and with a lot more depth, not just because of the previous wild-fire about the unpaid developers (I do recall 2014, and possibly one other before that) but that Yerli himself was commenting, who is someone we rarely hear speak.

Another post also discussed how Crytek has dropped the ball quite a lot over the last few years with its cancellation of several games like TimeSplitters 4, and commenting that if Crytek is in such dire financial straits then why didn’t they release the Crysis games as remastered, something that shouldn’t have been too hard and would have given them a good cash injection.

Also another interesting thing is what will happen with the “Star Engine” as it’s been dubbed by some fans, which is the heavily modified CryEngine used by the developers over at Cloud Imperium Games for Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Is the massive updates being done to that going to go over to Crytek? If it doesn’t, then any indie or not-so-large developer may choose to go with the “Star Engine” because of the extra features such as; the item interaction “Grabby Hands” and the ability to handle the whole system interaction.

Either way, it’s still a bad deal for the staff that hasn’t been paid for around 6 months, and are easily facing now the annoying long queue to collect state welfare. The staff here at Pixel Judge can only hope these talented people can get a new job quickly, and are able to get themselves onto a stable financial footing, they deserve it.