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Rumor: Crytek(Frankfurt) hasn't paid wages (on time?)in 4+ months for 300+ employees

vivekTO

Member
Why would MS be interested in that? If I'd be a decision maker at MS, if I wanted the Ryse IP for some weird reason, I'd just wait til Crytek is bankrupt, then they'll have to sell everything off for cheap anyway.

Because they can't afford 2-3 years to wait. I know Its not necessary , But the Ip will lose steam after a certain point of time. Also , someone else could by that like EA and Ubisoft, then what , it will not be an exclusive to microsoft than.
 

oti

Banned
Because they can't afford 2-3 years to wait. I know Its not necessary , But the Ip will lose steam after a certain point of time. Also , someone else could by that like EA and Ubisoft, then what , it will not be an exclusive to microsoft than.

What steam?
 
I'm not sure it will affect Star Citizen at all. Presumably they have paid for their license for the engine already.

Sure, but I imagine they will want to use the engine for the next five years at least. And if there is no support at all (from Crytek) due to there not being a Crytek anymore.. that doesn't sound too comforting considering how invested Chris Roberts is in the tech.
 
Because they can't afford 2-3 years to wait. I know Its not necessary , But the Ip will lose steam after a certain point of time. Also , someone else could by that like EA and Ubisoft, then what , it will not be an exclusive to microsoft than.

I don't think the IP had a lot of steam anyway. I feel the same way about it that I feel about The Order 1886.
 
Why would MS be interested in that? If I'd be a decision maker at MS, if I wanted the Ryse IP for some weird reason, I'd just wait til Crytek is bankrupt, then they'll have to sell everything off for cheap anyway.

Because it's a genre in which MS lacks, they have shown interest in buying it previously and a sequel could clearly be very good with some different decisions.
 
Sure, but I imagine they will want to use the engine for the next five years at least. And if there is no support at all (from Crytek) due to there not being a Crytek anymore.. that doesn't sound too comforting considering how invested Chris Roberts is in the tech.

CIG employ a larger number of people employed who are experts about the tech and have been actively deviating from the Crytek version for years now. It is frankly a non-issue.
He could easily hire a team of two dozen ex-Crytek guys to handle the tech in-house?

They already have this. There are tons of Crytek veterans across all the studios.
 
Sure, but I imagine they will want to use the engine for the next five years at least. And if there is no support at all (from Crytek) due to there not being a Crytek anymore.. that doesn't sound too comforting considering how invested Chris Roberts is in the tech.

He could easily hire a team of two dozen ex-Crytek guys to handle the tech in-house?
 
Sure, but I imagine they will want to use the engine for the next five years at least. And if there is no support at all (from Crytek) due to there not being a Crytek anymore.. that doesn't sound too comforting considering how invested Chris Roberts is in the tech.

CIG employs Marco Corbetta, the original designer of the cryengine. I don't think they have too much to worry about
 

wildfire

Banned
That sounds... I don't understand the kind of hold a company might have to make you stay after the first paycheck doesn't drop. Is it that bad for game devs out there?

People stay on jobs where payment is late in the service industry like restaurants and these are low paying jobs.

If they can hang on for 2 months of this nonsense devs with much higher wages can tolerate this behavior for a bit longer.

Besides switching to another company isn't a fast process. It does take a month or two if you are moving out of a smaller company. If you are moving out one of the largest employers in the same industry you'll have greater difficulty finding a suitable replacement.
 

Sydle

Member
I still can't believe they turned down Microsoft's offer to buy the Ryse IP and fund a sequel. That would have at least helped the situation for one team for a few years.
 
Always amazed how great the tech is but no-one can come up with anything over there.

They should've done something along the lines of Skyrim/Witcher 3. Ever since Crysis OG I thought you could make an incredible large scale RPG.
 

Lime

Member
These arent the Horizon Zero Dawn people right? Either way, this sucks for everyone involved.

Guerilla Games is a Dutch studio, located in the Netherlands. They are known for Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Crytek Frankfurt is a German studio, located in Germany. They are known for the graphics engine CryEngine and the Far Cry 1 and Crysis 1-3, Ryse, and Homefront games.
 

S1kkZ

Member
They are. Employee and employer both pay half (just about)

true. and usually, if the employer doesnt pay his half, the insurance can initiate insolvency procedures on their own (and they will, talking from experience here).
 
Because they can't afford 2-3 years to wait. I know Its not necessary , But the Ip will lose steam after a certain point of time. Also , someone else could by that like EA and Ubisoft, then what , it will not be an exclusive to microsoft than.

The IP has already lost steam.
 
Yikes. Best of luck to everyone over there. For what it's worth, I am buying Robinson: The Journey on day one and am greatly looking forward to it.
 

Rafus

Member
giphy.gif

I like you.
 

KOCMOHABT

Member
My god, the next time I want to read about Crytek again is in a goddamn retrospective. I liked your stupid games until you lost your ways.
 

Mael

Member
My god, the next time I want to read about Crytek again is in a goddamn retrospective. I liked your stupid games until you lost your ways.

I'm not even sure I ever played a game from them but the next time I want to hear about Crytek would be that they announce a new game (or release one) and that it's going to be a success and they're expanding.
We don't need to lose more studios.
 

blakep267

Member
Why would MS be interested in that? If I'd be a decision maker at MS, if I wanted the Ryse IP for some weird reason, I'd just wait til Crytek is bankrupt, then they'll have to sell everything off for cheap anyway.

well they wanted the IP previously and thats why the sequel was canned (because Crytek didn't want to sell it). Ryse with a few tweaks would be a solid game

Also they have no hack and slash game in their current lineup, so it would fill a spot
 

Holundrian

Unconfirmed Member
It's 4 months. An no. I don't know why anyone would do that either.
They must be getting something.

I assume part of it is people with families in Germany that can't just seek other opportunities outside of the country that still want to work in games.
We don't really have a lot of "good"/internationally recognized studios here.
 

Joni

Member
Not surprising when they haven't achieved anything since the last time they were in trouble. The amazon and homefront money could only last so long.
 
Sure, but I imagine they will want to use the engine for the next five years at least. And if there is no support at all (from Crytek) due to there not being a Crytek anymore.. that doesn't sound too comforting considering how invested Chris Roberts is in the tech.

They've rewritten 50% of the Engine, they haven't merged for over a year, they have full rights to their Engine, they're not very concerned about what's happening. They don't need support since they have some of the original creators on their team, and many engine programmers. However, they do need more so this is actually very good news for CIG if they can get a few more to cross lines. I'm sure they're working on it.

I do feel bad for the people at CryTek though, a great engine and everyone deserves to be paid.
 
If I was working someplace and wasn't paid in 4 months I would be a total dick about it. I think I would just act like how Peter does in Office Space.
 

takoyaki

Member
This could back up the information from the OP.

It's a post from a German gaming website from October 7 that mentions several people who work for Crytek contacting them about unpaid wages as well as advertising partners who haven't been paid in months.

https://gamezine.de/crytek-erneut-in-der-krise-interne-informationen-offenbaren-die-talfahrt.html

I have never heard of this site, so I'm not gonna translate the post. Does anyone know if gamezine.de is credible? German gaming sites have a tendency to just make up stuff for clicks.
 

Harlequin

Member
This could back up the information from the OP.

It's a post from a German gaming website from October 7 that mentions several people who work for Crytek contacting them about unpaid wages as well as advertising partners who haven't been paid in months.

https://gamezine.de/crytek-erneut-in-der-krise-interne-informationen-offenbaren-die-talfahrt.html

I have never heard of this site, so I'm not gonna translate the post. Does anyone know if gamezine.de is credible? German gaming sites have a tendency to just make up stuff for clicks.

Going off of the grammar and spelling in that article, the site doesn't exactly seem overly professional to say the least. Of course, the actual content may still be accurate but when the first paragraph has that many mistakes in it, that doesn't make the article appear trust-worthy.
 
That's a damn shame. They are one of the most influential studios regarding graphics technology, and I just don't understand how they have lasted all this time given that their games weren't super successful. I don't want to see them close down but not paying their employees is super shitty. I know I would have quit if I worked in a company like that.
 
F***! I hope this isn't true, I hope the best for the employees.

I don't want to see Crytek disappear, they sound like they're in a lot of trouble, terrible if true.
 

BitStyle

Unconfirmed Member
Fuck that. I had my paycheck held once and I made it known to my manager that if my following paycheck wasn't on time I was out the door. One of the reasons I left the gaming industry for IT not too long after.

Game developers put in way too much work to have to deal with that bullshit. Especially with companies that make millions off their precious work hours.
 
Put me on the "SELL THE DAMN RYSE IP TO MICROSOFT ALREADY" train.

Not because I care about Crytek as an entity, but an IP acquisition from MS could give them what they need to at least pay their employees. There are real people at this company who have apparently not been paid for their work in months.

That needs to be be remedied. By any means necessary.
 
Same.
I'm miserable at my job (non-gaming industry) and have been looking for a new one for 5 months now without much luck. It can be tough to just leave a place.

Yeah, I'm sure that every single person there has been actively putting there resume out there because they would be crazy not to. I'm also sure it's extra hard for them because if you're not getting paid then that probably means you can't really afford to travel and outside of Crytek I don't really know of many game devs located in Germany. A real bad situation for those people all around.
 

LewieP

Member
For what it's worth, after tweeting about this, I received DMs from someone familiar with the situation who has offered a reasonably strong indication that this story is indeed accurate.
 
Yeah, I'm sure that every single person there has been actively putting there resume out there because they would be crazy not to.

Games companies, and likely other industries, sometimes include non-compete clauses in your contract, meaning you can't actively seek employment with other companies while contracted to them. They could easily just be trapped.
 
Games companies, and likely other industries, sometimes include non-compete clauses in your contract, meaning you can't actively seek employment with other companies while contracted to them. They could easily just be trapped.

Who gives a **** when they're not paying you?

Seriously, what are the other companies going to do? Report you to your employer? Who will then fire you?

How will the company hold up the contract in court when they're not paying their employees in the first place? The reason contact law exists at all is because contracts are not absolute. I know we're cynics around here, but judges have a lot of power, and something that is as open-and-shut as "I didn't get paid for three months" is going to heavily prejudice them in your favor.

If anything, it's likely that Crytek is breaking laws that could get them into serious trouble, and they're hoping that their employees can be tricked into believing that they have no case to keep the con going.
 
Put me on the "SELL THE DAMN RYSE IP TO MICROSOFT ALREADY" train.

Not because I care about Crytek as an entity, but an IP acquisition from MS could give them what they need to at least pay their employees. There are real people at this company who have apparently not been paid for their work in months.

That needs to be be remedied. By any means necessary.

Seconded.
 

~Cross~

Member
They took a gamble too many and their engines lagged behind the newer, stronger and easier to develop for packages. I dont see how Crytek can support a 300 man operation with the greatly diminished revenue they must be getting.
 

Johnny M

Member
If they just walk off from the company they will lose the severence package and unemployment benefits (which are/ used to be huge in Europe). During the bankruptcy process in most of EUs countries, workers are the first to be paid (just after the social security) plus there are some kind of public office that covers those unpaid salaries in case the trustee cant.

So they have to hold on there until, either, the company goes bankrupt or they find another job to jump in (losing "only" your severence package).
 

Acidote

Member
Just to leave a note here, not every country has the same working legislations.

Years ago I wasn't paid wages for six whole months. Administration process. I got my money like a year later from a sort of government insurance program for these cases and by then the business was managed by a new company that kept all the jobs.

That in addition to what Johnny M said.
 

jschreier

Member
So obviously this happened on a large scale two years ago. This past August I got a couple of anonymous tips from people saying that Crytek was missing payments again, but the tipsters wouldn't tell me who they were, and shortly afterwards, they followed up to say Crytek had paid. Clearly something's still going on.
 
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