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Gamestar.de: The vultures are circling over Crytek [Up3: Eurogamer/Kotaku jump in]
- Thread starter DieH@rd
- Start date
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Jesus, You would never have thought they were in such bad shape.
Valve also was able to build the one PC platform people can agree to install on their computer and get consumers to buy product from and companiges to part royalties from.
AstroNut325
Member
Best of luck to the employees. Hope they find employment elsewhere soon. Or they start their own studios. It would be great if they did that and we end up getting MORE games than Crytek even had in it's planning stages.
I assumed their games had to sell really fucking well in Germany and Poland to make up for how they were doing everywhere else for their budgets.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
http://kotaku.com/rumors-swirl-about-trouble-at-crytek-1586824777
Some more stuff in there. Troubling to say the least.
Some more stuff in there. Troubling to say the least.
Thursday War
Banned
3 months wtf
angular graphics
Banned
Didn't know that. But I know this: although initially Ubisoft made some throwaway comments about how Far Cry 2's engine evolved from the CryEngine codebase, in later years I've seen them explicitly write something along the lines "Note: based on CryEngine" when talking about it, which I interpreted as Crytek's legal department applying pressure.
Kotaku has also sources telling them about late payments at multiple Crytek studios.
http://kotaku.com/rumors-swirl-about-trouble-at-crytek-1586824777
http://kotaku.com/rumors-swirl-about-trouble-at-crytek-1586824777
Because they had vision during their formative years, Crytek opted to chase the latest trends and got scraps because of it.
You don't get big in Germany/Poland by screwing over PC consumers and then focusing on the XBO. I don't believe Xbox has a big presence there at all.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Part of the problem, I think, has been the sales performance of the Crysis sequels. Crysis 2 was so poor imo on consoles (and not techniclly groundbreaking enough on PC) that it alienated a lot of gamers on both platforms. As a result, Crysis 3 sold less when I assume Crytek were trying to grow the franchise into something a lot bigger given the budget.
YianGaruga
Banned
It served them very well while they were on top. Crysis was a legend for years. Now everyone else is just as good and their gameplay just isn't competing.
Huh? Epic are doing great with their engine business and seem to be pursuing passion projects like UT, you don't do that kind of experimentation if you're low on revenue.
id made the the wrong choices in regards to their tech, they spent 6 years developing an engine solely optimised for a console that was nearing its obsoletion, meanwhile ignoring the platform that would have allowed them to more easily transition into modern gaming hardware (PC with x86 architecture). They saw how the 360 was basically a high-end PC at launch and thought to develop an engine entirely around that, ignorant to how fast the industry can evolve.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Epic are fine. They're also owned by Tencent, so have no financial worries for the time being.
Crytek's problem was not in pursuing high-end graphics, but in following trends and trying to make their games appeal to the widest possible audience but making poorer products as a result. To use terminology I'm not fond of, they definitely 'console-ised' their games. They should have doubled down on what made Crysis a success, not changed the fundamental design of the sequel to try and find a larger audience.
Most people dont know that Tencent has a large set of shares invested in Epic.
Tencent is everywhere.
Wtf that is disgusting.
Yeah, unlike Crytek, Epic is actually successfully switching to a self published model and actually still running a successful licensing business.
It's certainly a large change, but if you look at their contemporaries like Valve and Blizzard, I think deciding to go from the AAA blockbuster model to the f2p service model makes a lot of sense for them given their team size and focus.
They also didn't balloon to 800 people and then try to make this decision without any prior success.
and in Riot Games
Thats more well known, you hear them mentioned all the time from LoL people about Riots current developmental output and pricing model since the Tencent buyout.
Its either a Chinese firm, I doubt its Tencent, since they already have a studio that has a licensed engine for sale, could be one of their big competitors, trying to do something similar to Tencent, but i dont know enough about that market to come up with a name.
Or they get bought out by the monolithic WoT devs, Wargaming. (rumors)
Looks like that F2P/Mobile future is working out pretty well for them.
Feel sorry for the good people there losing their jobs though.
Feel sorry for the good people there losing their jobs though.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
According to a post I just read on an industry insider board (TCE) things have been rocky, but are improving.
Alleged source was a friend of the poster at Crytek HQ.
I can't vouch for its veracity, obviously it could be damage control, but I'd give it as much credit as any other unverified "insider" source.
Alleged source was a friend of the poster at Crytek HQ.
I can't vouch for its veracity, obviously it could be damage control, but I'd give it as much credit as any other unverified "insider" source.
Yeah, I don't think it's Tencent solely on the basis that Tencent really only makes smart investments, whereas I don't think this is actually a good idea on paper.
I feel for them this was more a reaction to not being able to sign console projects though, given the type of things they made and the staff size they went to.
Like one of the notes in the OP is that they're trying to sign Ryse 2, but want control of the IP. Epic by comparison sold off Gears of War by virtue of not wanting to make games in the style of Gears of War anymore.
Crytek, while talking one way, never really acted like they truly believed it.
Well the article notes they have some kind of short term investment at least, but no one knows how long that's expected to last or if it's just enough cash to try and attain some kind of buyout/massive revamp.
Losing jobs or not getting paid sucks big time, I can feel for the employees.
That said, I'm not a fan of Crytek, to say at least. Yerli's vision of gaming is quite the opposite of what I prefer, Crytek's engine philosophy is just bad. And if what some gaffers said is true, the engine itself is bad as well.
That said, I'm not a fan of Crytek, to say at least. Yerli's vision of gaming is quite the opposite of what I prefer, Crytek's engine philosophy is just bad. And if what some gaffers said is true, the engine itself is bad as well.
I agree after the first Crysis they just banked on graphics first and foremost. Crysis at least expanded the open gameplay of Far Cry. They should have kept this legacy.
Tencent? **Googles**. A Chinese investment holding company? Ok Epic should be fine financially but UE4 is not being adopted very fast compared to UE3 and they haven't been able to keep playing the Most Advanced Graphics Engine card.
Lord_Balkan
Member
UE4 is being adopted by an insane amount of indie devs- 15 dollars per user per month with vs say 500k license fee or more for only a dozen studios / publishers. Quickly the amount of money by opening the engine up is more valuable than closing it off to everyone but AAA studios.
They need to port all four Crysis games to the new consoles.
So far I haven't seen it. We are already 8 months (Or 1 year and 8 months) into this generation. But I agree this business model will probably be beneficial for them mid-term They had to do it anyway.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Yep, although I'm not even sure most people know who Tencent are, as demonstrated by:
Tencent are a big deal, the fifth biggest online company after Amazon, Google, eBay and Facebook, and have increasing interest in video games. We'll be hearing a lot more of them, I'm sure.
Isn't Valve still like only 300 people in total? I remember reading a while back they were very modestly sized, although that could have changed as Steam's importance really seems to have accelerated since then.
Is GungHo Chinese or Japanese? They're another who I expect to be hearing much more from over the next few years.
To be fair, we're not even a year into this generation proper, and how many games used UE3 in the first year of the 360 generation? It wasn't until after Gears that adoption really accelerated. Although the pick-up this generation may be a bit slower as there's no Gears-level engine showcase on the horizon. Unreal Tournament and Fortnite are probably still some way from release.
Vindicator
Member
Let's hope all the people get paid, or maybe find a better employer worth their talent.
Crytek seemed way too arrogant to me, like their "Maximum Game" slogan back in 2007 as well as a lot of statements by Cevat Yerli.
Concerning Homefront 2...
Crytek seemed way too arrogant to me, like their "Maximum Game" slogan back in 2007 as well as a lot of statements by Cevat Yerli.
Concerning Homefront 2...
1600x900 - No change No compromise
Valve is still 300ish people for the entire company. But then again Valve really isn't someone to use as an example considering their very unique corporate structure. Dota 2, their largest game, and one of the larger games in the PC market, is currently being developed by 20-30ish people.
But its still amazing the amount of games + services they have developed over the years with a generally very small group of developers compared to their competitors.
Blizzard, their closest matching PC developer, is monolithic is size compared to Valve. Most of that tho is stemming from running WoW.
ashecitism
Member
Yes. Last "reported" number from last fall was 330.
Triggerhappytel
Member
His comment not long ago that graphics are 60% of a game is one of my favourites. No wonder they're failing if their CEO/owner (whatever he is) has an attitude like that!
Succinct Verbosity
Member
Crytek have grown too fast with very little success. The Crysis IP seems to have deminished in significance with every subsequent release, Ryse was mediocre and their F2P efforts have been lacking any significant growth outside of Russia.
Although it was commendable for Crytek to save some Free Radical employees and open up a new studio for them, it is probably one of the major reasons for their current troubles.
Although it was commendable for Crytek to save some Free Radical employees and open up a new studio for them, it is probably one of the major reasons for their current troubles.
StreetDisciple
Member
Are these people who "are not being paid" contract workers? It would blow my mind if actual salaried employees of a company are not being paid.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
It must kill them to see far cry turned into a huge AAA series while Crysis 3 became an excellent $5 pc benchmark tool.
And the amount of new updates they provide seeing tweets from mark rein is pretty cool to see. They get the whole UE4 no compromise what so ever the whole shabang.
They have an internal name for this. Beautification. Basically whatever is produced or developed needs to hit this standard and he personally makes sure its "beautificated" before gameplay.
Anyway, each month they have told their employees a date which they were going to pay out salaries but still didn't do.
In media they say they are fine. Kotaku had their article ready around 2-3 weeks but didn't post it. You can clearly see they got contacted back in april for the first issues.
GungHo is Japanese, but they're owned by SoftBank (who also just bought Supercell).
Chances of them making any major independent acquisitions are pretty low.
Lord_Balkan
Member
They are developing a large, installed- invested user base. Epic can probably live very healthily just from providing a platform to indies only for developing games. They probably don't care if other AAA engines pass them up- no other AAA engine can match what Epic is offering. Shoot, AAA PC only devs can take advantage of this.
TheMaidenInBlack
Banned
They haven't made a good game since Crysis so hardly surprising or sad.
As long as you're talking about UE3 licenses
Neuromancer
Member
People not getting paid for the work they're doing is sad. Whether you personally like the studio's latest output or not shouldn't make a difference.
Also most employees of the studio are putting out stellar work. Assets, tech, sound is top notch. But these things can't shine because a few designers, bad management and Z-Tier Hollywood writers are shitting up the place.
SwiftDeath
Member
So at this point the Homefront franchise is probably cursed, no?