Crytek in financial trouble?

RamonGTP said:
That isn't saying much for games that cost nothing to get into.
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Not sure what your point is. The production value of World of Tanks is great, from the environment, to the textures, to the sound, to the constant updates (and nerfs, gotta take the good with the bad). My point is that Wargaming provides an exceptionally good value to PC gamers. Those who want to play for free can do so but are obviously limited, and those who want to pay can do so and get an incredibly good bang for the buck.

So once again, how exactly is Wargaming worse than Ubi/EA?

Derangel said:
There is no reason for either of them to pick up Crytek really. EA already has Frostbite that they use for all internal projects, they have no need for another engine. Ubi already has Far Fry, what use is there for other arguably less popular FPS franchises?
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Depending on the price Ubi/EA buys it to shelf it so that no one else can use it, one less competing engine to worry about.
 
Thuleman said:
Not sure what your point is. The production value of World of Tanks is great, from the environment, to the textures, to the sound, to the constant updates (and nerfs, gotta take the good with the bad). My point is that Wargaming provides an exceptionally good value to PC gamers. Those who want to play for free can do so but are obviously limited, and those who want to pay can do so and get an incredibly good bang for the buck.

So once again, how exactly is Wargaming worse than Ubi/EA?



Depending on the price Ubi/EA buys it to shelf it so that no one else can use it, one less competing engine to worry about.
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My point is quite simple, but I'll spell it out for you. Having full servers is not much of an accomplishment when you're giving away your games for free.

Secondly, I didn't say any publisher is better or worse than anyone else. I said if the major publishers that you're hating on didn't exist, we'd have shit games to choose from. Sure, you may find an occasional gem in that pile of shit, but that's what it is... Occasional and the rest is crap.

Obviously we have different opinions on the matter, which is perfectly fine, but hopefully that clears up your confusion as to what I was actually saying.

Also, if they buy it, that in and of itself is a reason no to worry about it. Having a software engine they paid money for "sitting on a shelf" would make no sense, Licensing it out and getting at least some ROI does, and these large publishers didn't get large by spending money on things they have no intention of getting a return on. They may or may not use it for their own games, but different engines have different characteristics, just as different games do. Where Frostbite may be ideal for one, CryEngine may be a much better fit for others.
 
Thuleman said:
Depending on the price Ubi/EA buys it to shelf it so that no one else can use it, one less competing engine to worry about.
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What competition? EA has no interest in licensing Frostbite to other studios and Ubi's engines are so filled with their own property tech that licensing them would be a challenge. CryEnginge isn't competition to either of them.
 
Doubtful. Crytek has done fairly well licensing to the film industry for use in pre-visualization. Even if things are hurting on the gaming side and they're just bleeding money on their extremities, I'd think they'd be in okay shape. Unless they're really bleeding.

socK said:
Also the way they handle the engine is a joke compared to Epic.
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How so?

Hamateer said:
I hope this doesn't effect TurtleRocks Evolve...
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Evolve is very nearly in the can. Even if this story is true, it shouldn't affect Turtle Rock at all.

Plague_Injected said:
Good riddance, Crybabytek.
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It might put a fair number of really competent people out of work, however. While people losing their jobs isn't the biggest deal in the world, I think you probably ought to put the human element ahead of your own entitlement issues.
 
wonderfield said:
It might put a fair number of really competent people out of work, however. While people losing their jobs isn't the biggest deal in the world, I think you probably ought to put the human element ahead of your own entitlement issues.
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Entitlement issues? No. Crytek took a risk and changed its primary target audience, and it hasn't paid off.
 
How's that console lead platform treating ya?
Funny how they were fine till they switched, I got a pocket full of fucks, and I ain't giving them one.
Crytek's claim to fame to me will always be the creation of a an awesome engine for MechWarrior Living Legends and nothing else. Too bad
 
Thuleman said:
So once again, how exactly is Wargaming worse than Ubi/EA?
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Because the free to play model is garbage and does in fact ruin gameplay. If it did not then no one would drop a cent and the developers would promptly go out of business.

At least with Ubi/EA there is a chance of getting a good game and you can always wait for massive discounts ($5-10). $5-10 gets you "account upgrades" and "XP boasts" in free to play games. Essentially nothing.

Plague_Injected said:
It's pretty fitting that the company that lambasted the PC community for "hurr piracy" is getting sunk by its overinvestment and subsequent flop in the console market.

Good riddance, Crybabytek.
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One of the titles that lost them money was Warface, which is also a PC game. A free to play one at that; a genre that has historically been stronger on PC.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Wasn't that exclusive to basically Russia for ages though?
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That probably has nothing to do with its failure. You don't even know what a bad game actually is if you haven't played Warface. Warface looked at the worst of the worst in the gaming industry and said "We can do worse than that. If we put our minds to it, we can be worse than any other game has ever been before." And by god, they did it.
 
Spewn said:
That probably has nothing to do with its failure. You don't even know what a bad game actually is if you haven't played Warface. Warface looked at the worst of the worst in the gaming industry and said "We can do worse than that. If we put our minds to it, we can be worse than any other game has ever been before." And by god, they did it.
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lol that bad eh?
 
Spewn said:
That probably has nothing to do with its failure. You don't even know what a bad game actually is if you haven't played Warface. Warface looked at the worst of the worst in the gaming industry and said "We can do worse than that. If we put our minds to it, we can be worse than any other game has ever been before." And by god, they did it.
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Lol. At least they hit their development goal.
 
Plague_Injected said:
lol that bad eh?
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I honestly don't know if Warface is the worst part, or if G-Face is the worst part. The two of them make quite the gaming shit-sandwich though. Warface itself is bad, it *functions* so it's not bad in terms of bugs it's just...the most bland and dry game I can imagine, and the mechanics are boring and shitty and it looks like ass and then to use it you have to go through G-Face which is just the most awful unintuitive "social gaming interface" or whatever that I have ever experienced. Warface is easily made twice as bad due to the fact that you have to use G-Face to play it. I've played like, pretty much every english(and english-translated) F2P game there is, I find a F2P game I haven't played and I'll download it and give it a shot and I honestly can't think of anything that even comes close to taking Warface's "#1 worst game I've ever played" spot.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Wasn't that exclusive to basically Russia for ages though?
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It was (high piracy in the region). Which might explain why the only market Warface didn't fail in was Russia. I have not played the game itself. As others said it did not look all that great and that G-Face thing put me off. These were the two things to bring Crytek down. They also bought the Homefront IP and I guess between two fail projects and buying an IP they can use some money now.
 
piscian18 said:
ugh that was such a buggy mess. In some ways better than the original though.
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I'd say pretty much in all ways that mattered. It looked a little worse than Crysis 1 but it played better, the story was better, the pacing was better, it didn't completely turn to shit the moment aliens showed up, the alien AI was better, you actually had options when taking on aliens, etc. It was just over all a better experience. The multiplayer element, Crysis Wars, was really fun too.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Entitlement issues? No. Crytek took a risk and changed its primary target audience, and it hasn't paid off.
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I'm not sure if that's what killed Crytek vs simply over investment. Even with Crysis 1 they probably over invested and while we might think it was good sales, it probably wasn't good enough for what they invested.

Kind of like Bulletstorm, the game was considered a flop, but actually sold a lot of copies... they were just banking on it selling a hell of a lot more copies.
 
They're only good at making things look pretty anyways. Let the actual game developers make real games, and not some slide-show or a benchmark in a video game form.
 
Farcry 1 and Crysis were cool, they just threw a potentially interesting story out the window at the end and ignored the potential for 2 and 3 to go with what the sheeple thought they wanted. So must wasted potential. The engine is great but as someone else said not shopped around well enough IMO (not that I would really know but it seems that way.)

I hope they can get their act together.
 
FarCry1 and Crysis1 REALLY felt awesome. I can't imagine games that conveyed a better sense of 'guerrilla' combat, crouching through the bushes with your trusty rifle, sneak up on an enemy, maybe swim in under their docks and take 'em out 1by1. The truth is that Crysis 2 was CoD with aliums. And Crysis 3 was CoD with more aliums and amazing looking grass.
 
Damnit .. They finally have a title I'm interested in (Home front). Who knows how that ends up if they go under. Our luck UBI will buy the IP and turn the main character into a parkouring white guy.
 
KazeoHin said:
FarCry1 and Crysis1 REALLY felt awesome. I can't imagine games that conveyed a better sense of 'guerrilla' combat, crouching through the bushes with your trusty rifle, sneak up on an enemy, maybe swim in under their docks and take 'em out 1by1.
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It might have conveyed that better if it weren't for the fact enemies can see through the bushes but you can't.
 
Tudz said:
It might have conveyed that better if it weren't for the fact enemies can see through the bushes but you can't.
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Yeah, in Crysis 3 enemies can see through that beautifull grass and I cannot see through it. Still game is a lot of fun! Much better then Crysis 2.
 
Tudz said:
I'm not sure if that's what killed Crytek vs simply over investment. Even with Crysis 1 they probably over invested and while we might think it was good sales, it probably wasn't good enough for what they invested.

Kind of like Bulletstorm, the game was considered a flop, but actually sold a lot of copies... they were just banking on it selling a hell of a lot more copies.
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Crysis 1 cost 20 million to develop, but that included the engine development costs which were going to be recouped via licensing. Yerli has been recorded as stating that they did well on Crysis, just not as well as they would have liked which kinda ties in to his over inflated sense of entitlement that Crysis was a multibillion dollar blockbuster franchise like CoD and Halo. That is quite a different issue to Bulletstorm where People Can Fly didn't have to develop an engine from scratch, they simply used UE3.

Crysis 2 and 3 were not cases of over investment, although there may have been that to some degree knowing how grotesquely bloated EA's marketing campaigns tend to be, rather they simply did not sell anywhere near as many copies as the original games despite having gone multiplatform.
 
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Crytek denies its on the verge of bankruptcy:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-23-crysis-developer-crytek-claims-bankrupt-report-is-false

Crysis developer Crytek has denied claims it is on the verge of bankruptcy.

A recent report from German magazine GameStar claimed Crytek, which has its headquarters in Frankfurt, was in financial trouble and that the development of Xbox One exclusive Ryse: Son of Rome had been a "disaster".

Our colleagues at Eurogamer Germany looked into the report, and gave me the following translation:

"'The vultures are circling already,' so says a leading employee of one of the large publishers. Companies like this have already started making offers to the most talented people at Crytek, to hire them away. Such a brain drain can become dangerous for any studio, even a financially stable one.

"A takeover of Crytek would be interesting for a company, that could use the development-experience of the Crytek and doesn't want to build up such experience itself. That is why the Belarus F2P-giant Wargaming is rumored to be a potential buyer.

"When you are reading this, there is hope that Crytek has managed to avoid disaster. A new source of money, said Avni Yerli [one of the managing directors], is in sight. When we called him in early June, the contract had not yet been signed, but will be in a short while. 'Not all is good. Our transition to become a F2P-studio had been painful. But all that is now behind us.'"

Responding to our enquiries, Crytek dismissed the GameStar report.

A Crytek spokesperson issued Eurogamer the following statement:

"Regardless of what some media are reporting, mostly based on a recent article published by GameStar, the information in those reports and in the GameStar article itself are rumors which Crytek deny.

"We continue to focus on the development and publishing of our upcoming titles Homefront: The Revolution, Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, Arena of Fate, and Warface, as well as providing ongoing support for our CryEngine and its licensees.

"We have received a lot of positive feedback during and after E3 from both gaming press and gamers, and would like to thank our loyal employees, fans and business partners for their continuous support."

Crytek has a number of studios worldwide, and has recently announced a number of games in development, including Homefront: The Revolution at Crytek UK in Nottingham and Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age at Crytek USA in Austin, Texas. It also has a game engine licensing business for CryEngine.

"We have received a lot of positive feedback during and after E3 from both gaming press and gamers, and would like to thank our loyal employees, fans and business partners for their continuous support."

Before E3 one source told Eurogamer staff at Crytek's Sofia office in Bulgaria hadn't received salaries for the past two months.

Eurogamer has also received worrying reports coming out of Crytek UK, which is rumoured to have failed to pay employees on time. Management have been accused by some staff of a lack of transparency over these issues, and many are disgruntled, Eurogamer has heard.

But Crytek may have secured investment and thus its future - in the short term at least. The GameStar report mentions a potential buyout by World of Tanks maker Wargaming, but Eurogamer has heard investment from a Chinese firm may have been tabled.
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Honestly, they have nothing to gain from being straight up about finances to the general public. This is not a public company, and the investors, current and potential, would assume liability by doing so.

Anyway, I hope everything works out for them. It would be a shame to see another independent developer get bought up.
 
Any business can run into a cashflow problem, but for a software business that's really problematic because they (conceivably) don't have a lot of accounts receivables outstanding. Those who trade in physical goods and sell them at Net 30 or whatnot can have millions in receivables which are going to be paid in a few weeks but Crytek doesn't have that.

All Crytek has is the assumption that their next game will sell well and bring in a bunch of profit, so they borrow against that, which is a highly speculative move. For practical purposes, and without knowing details, the company was mismanaged into a situation where their operating expenses outpaced their prior profits, cash on hand, and development cycle.

This type of problem is unlikely to be solved by a cash injection since it's a management problem. The new cash will simply delay the inevitable which is either massive layoffs of bankruptcy, or perhaps acquisition without going into bankruptcy where the buyers assume the debt.
 
chockomonkey said:
So annoying.. Why can't people just talk about stuff anymore?
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Its called business, they're trying to find a buyer and get the best deal possible. If they admit they're in dire straights their evaluation just took a huge hit and they have no leverage to negotiate a good deal. It could mean the difference of tens of millions of dollars.
 
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Never really understood why their engine wasn't adopted more. Maybe their middleware sucked. God I hate UE. Plastic everywhere.
 
Flogger23m said:
Because the free to play model is garbage and does in fact ruin gameplay. If it did not then no one would drop a cent and the developers would promptly go out of business.
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So your argument is that, across the globe, millions of people drop billions of dollars into F2P games because all those games suck and the gameplay is horrible, and it's just shit all around, but all those customers are masochists and keep paying anyway. Yup, that does in fact make perfect sense to me.

Flogger23m said:
At least with Ubi/EA there is a chance of getting a good game and you can always wait for massive discounts ($5-10). $5-10 gets you "account upgrades" and "XP boasts" in free to play games. Essentially nothing.
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I can't speak for others, here is what $15/month for World of Tanks "subscription" gets me; countless hours of really good fun playing a game where the mechanics are great, individual skill of the player matters, the graphics are awesome, and the gameplay is such that I can walk away after no more than 15 minutes and deal with RL to come back to the game at a later time without having lost out on anything.

Those $15/month over the past few years have brought me, dollar for dollar, a lot more value and enjoyment than any "AAA" title ever did. For all I can EA and Ubi with their shitty console ports, Day1 DLCs, money grabbing DLCs, CoD rehashes, and fucked up endings to games (i.e. ME3) can DIAF and my life won't be worst off for it.

I can't be sure, but I assume that the hundreds of thousands of other players who play and pay for WoT have similar experiences. So yeah, the argument that Wargaming as a company is much worse for PC gamers than EA/Ubi is impossible to follow.
 
Thuleman said:
So your argument is that, across the globe, millions of people drop billions of dollars into F2P games because all those games suck and the gameplay is horrible, and it's just shit all around, but all those customers are masochists and keep paying anyway. Yup, that does in fact make perfect sense to me.
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Are you saying that latest CoD rehash was an excellent game to? Because that is one of the best selling games in history. Must be great then.

Thuleman said:
I can't speak for others, here is what $15/month for World of Tanks "subscription" gets me; countless hours of really good fun playing a game where the mechanics are great, individual skill of the player matters, the graphics are awesome, and the gameplay is such that I can walk away after no more than 15 minutes and deal with RL to come back to the game at a later time without having lost out on anything.

Those $15/month over the past few years have brought me, dollar for dollar, a lot more value and enjoyment than any "AAA" title ever did. For all I can EA and Ubi with their shitty console ports, Day1 DLCs, money grabbing DLCs, CoD rehashes, and fucked up endings to games (i.e. ME3) can DIAF and my life won't be worst off for it.

I can't be sure, but I assume that the hundreds of thousands of other players who play and pay for WoT have similar experiences. So yeah, the argument that Wargaming as a company is much worse for PC gamers than EA/Ubi is impossible to follow.
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Great, so you pay more for a game and have to get hindered by XP boasts, accounts and other crap flying in your face when you play. Did I mention you've paid $180 a year? Excellent. Just what we need. $360 yearly on a basic game with pop ups, accounts and other crap to manage. May as well get a job which pays you.

On money spent alone the value of a "free to play" game is a bad value compared to the traditional model. And lets not forget free to play essentially kills off SP games. You may not like them, but many do. Always nice to have a variety.
 
Flogger23m said:
Are you saying that latest CoD rehash was an excellent game to? Because that is one of the best selling games in history. Must be great then.



Great, so you pay more for a game and have to get hindered by XP boasts, accounts and other crap flying in your face when you play. Did I mention you've paid $180 a year? Excellent. Just what we need. $360 yearly on a basic game with pop ups, accounts and other crap to manage. May as well get a job which pays you.

On money spent alone the value of a "free to play" game is a bad value compared to the traditional model. And lets not forget free to play essentially kills off SP games. You may not like them, but many do. Always nice to have a variety.
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LoL what the hell are you talking about?

F2P does not kill gameplay. Look at Dota or Dota 2. Hell Hearthstone is a great F2P game.

A subscription model is a very good solution for online games that are generating new content and features.

Spending money on a F2P game is not a waste if you value the product, and feel like you as the consumer is getting your monies worth. Just because you don't like a product doesn't mean that its a waste of money to another consumer. I don't like beats but you don't see me telling people who like beats they are wasting there money.

I don't think anyone thinks that F2P is killing of SP games, except I guess you.
 
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