Crytek Shuts Down Five Studios

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After rumors of payroll issues surfaced last week, Crytek has announced today that it is closing five studios to "refocus on its core strengths." The press release states that only its Frankfurt and Kiev studios will remain open, leaving Budapest, Sofia, Istanbul, Shanghai and Seoul to be closed or sold.


Crytek today outlined a series of changes to its future business plans that will see the company refocus on its core strengths of developing innovative games and game-development technology. As part of the changes, Crytek will concentrate on development in its Frankfurt and Kiev studios and continue to develop and work on premium IPs. CRYENGINE will remain a core pillar of Crytek’s overall strategy, with enterprise licensees and indie developers alike continuing to be served by regular engine updates. All other development studios will not remain within Crytek and management has put plans into action to secure jobs and to ensure a smooth transition and stable future.
 
Hmmm.... I wonder how this will affect Star Citizen. If at all.
 
DukenukemX said:
Don't their games do well in sales? How are they low on money?
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Think of it more from an Engine licensing corporation. How many Unreal Engine games do you see on Steam? Now think of how many CryEngine games have you seen licensed on Steam lately? I think the main reason is because of them missing feature set releases such as Mantle, DX12, and Vulkan.
 
cageymaru said:
Now think of how many CryEngine games have you seen licensed on Steam lately? I think the main reason is because of them missing feature set releases such as Mantle, DX12, and Vulkan.
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Pretty much. They hit it out of the park originally. Was advanced and beautiful for the time, but seems they sat on their laurels too long.
 
cageymaru said:
Think of it more from an Engine licensing corporation. How many Unreal Engine games do you see on Steam? Now think of how many CryEngine games have you seen licensed on Steam lately? I think the main reason is because of them missing feature set releases such as Mantle, DX12, and Vulkan.
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I've seen comments from people who tried to develop games using cryengine and they insisted that it was buggy and had tons of documentation issues. I don't think unreal has those same issues.
 
A little disappointed, this smells like mismanagement to me. Ryse was the last Crytek game I played and it was amazing. I think it might still be the best looking game out there.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
I've seen comments from people who tried to develop games using cryengine and they insisted that it was buggy and had tons of documentation issues. I don't think unreal has those same issues.
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My understanding is the following. This may have changed :

1) Epic's support was better.
2) UE4 free, aside from the obvious fees. Cryengine had hidden fees and paid plugins.
3) UE4 was better in some areas, but Cryengine had an edge in others.

What I heard from some devs.
 
Man I feel bad for game and engine developers when I see stuff like this. I bet they get into the business with all these aspirations, get burned working "for the man" essentially and then you see some kid get randomly famous and have his future set for building some unique Source mod or the like. Kevin smith once said "Take the 50k loan for film school and make your own movie, if it doesn't work out at least you did something worthwhile with it." or some such. The point being you might be better off working independently on videogames than going to school and end up working for a company like Crytek who forgets to pay you.
 
Ryse had sub par reviews though. The first Crysis was a good game. The last 2 I feel were more or less eye candy displaying off their engine. Really haven't had a major release from them.
 
DukenukemX said:
Don't their games do well in sales? How are they low on money?
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As far as I understand it the three Crysis games sold well enough, but that's it. Ryse was a massive disappointment in terms of sales, the Climb hasn't pushed a ton of units, and their free-to-play stuff isn't bringing in a ton of money.
 
Wasn't there some issue with ryse, Microsoft exclusive and xbox sales? Seems like I recall them not making enough or covering the cost of developing the title due to the deal they had with Ms and low xbox sales
 
Shit, I got buddies at the Sofia studio :(

There's still Ubi but... yea, Ubi sucks.

Time for more gaming start ups I guess.
 
Crixus said:
Hmmm.... I wonder how this will affect Star Citizen. If at all.
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Cloud Imperium bought a source code license for the engine about 2 years ago, nothing will change in that department. That being said they could just scoop up some of the senior talent.
 
Bankrupt studio goes super duper bankrupt?

Sell the engine to the highest bidder and call it a day.

Kor said:
Cloud Imperium bought a source code license for the engine about 2 years ago, nothing will change in that department. That being said they could just scoop up some of the senior talent.
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Yeah Chris should probably just buy the rights to Cryengine and bring it in house. And some of the top devs if there are any left. They have infinite monies over there.
 
Burticus said:
Yeah Chris should probably just buy the rights to Cryengine and bring it in house. And some of the top devs if there are any left. They have infinite monies over there.
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They don't need to, with a source code license they can do anything they want to it.
 
Samson4EiT said:
Pretty much. They hit it out of the park originally. Was advanced and beautiful for the time, but seems they sat on their laurels too long.
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Even when they first started out, it's not like many were using the Cryengine anyways. You can count on your fingers and toes how many games came out for each Cryengine version. You can't do that with the Unreal Engine.
 
WTF were they doing with so many studios? I thought Crytek Budapest has shut down years ago, there was a big shitstorm too. I haven't even heard about any big title in the works from them. And what did they do before? Crysis3, Ryse, Climb. That's it right?
Keeping a bunch of offices open around the world and producing nothing will get you right in trouble.
And how about big cryengine games? Can you name one besides starcitizen? Because I'm sure as hell can't.
 
This is just part of the learning process for corporations that running a business without paying your employees only carries you so far.
 
M76 said:
WTF were they doing with so many studios? I thought Crytek Budapest has shut down years ago, there was a big shitstorm too. I haven't even heard about any big title in the works from them. And what did they do before? Crysis3, Ryse, Climb. That's it right?
Keeping a bunch of offices open around the world and producing nothing will get you right in trouble.
And how about big cryengine games? Can you name one besides starcitizen? Because I'm sure as hell can't.
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The Robinson game just released recently. Hunt for next year. I hear The Robinson game was terrible and Hunt doesn't even sound interesting.
 
It's the EA/Microsoft curse. Game quality went downhill after Crysis 1. Find a better publisher or start making indie games.
 
Crixus said:
Hmmm.... I wonder how this will affect Star Citizen. If at all.
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I doubt much at all, if you watch the last few years of content they put out, especially the developers stuff, they have changed this engine so much it is barely cryengine at all anymore. They've reworked every aspect of the engine with their own code, and I don't know about now but they used to have two of the guys who built the engine at Crytek working for them. They've got enough of their own code that I don't imagine anything will be a problem for them. Hell at this point it's their own engine already, and even if not they have so much experience with it they can bend it to whatever they want
 
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