Anybody know what's up with Crytek?
polycounter lvl 9
I've read a few articles here and there and heard the rumors. Does anybody know how bad it really is?
Is Crytek doomed?
Is Crytek doomed?
Replies
They've canceled 2 games, reports say they are having issues paying people, they've told employees to not talk to the press, their new engine subscription model has been poorly received.
It's been a bad year for Crytek so far.
That would really suck for the people working there, having their studio killed twice in such a short period of time
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Crytek-Reviews-E347451.htm
Good luck Cry ;/
I know some amazingly talented guys there... keeping my fingers crossed for them.
Really? Oh man - bad times indeed.
I'll have to send aout a few mails and see if I can find out how the guys are I know are doing then.
From what I gather, GoodGame are trying to go into 'conventional' games. Yeah.
Still there to my knowledge.
There is creator of men of war series,digitalmindsoft.
Men of War are made from ground up by Ukranian developers Best Way.
Germany still has Daedalic and those guys who made Venetica and now are making this Dark Souls game which is produced by the former CD Projekt RED producer, I forgot the title but it's pretty known.
Also Piranha Byte (Gothica, Risen series).
I'm pretty sure that original men of war was made by Ukrainian company but later ones by digitalmindsoft or they are cooperating.
this is what happens when a company wants to grow very very fast. Epic Fail.
I think we just have to get used to an industry that has fewer giant studios and more medium and small developers. The void being filled with F2P is preferable to the industry simply contracting.
preach on brotha!
I would probably say more a 'Crytek fail', hyahyahya
Ryse was just a horrible idea. They should have stuck to what they are good at and created a new IP shooter as a lunch title, which probably would have done much better than Ryse. FPS with decent online always sell well in the consoles early life cycle. I just do not understand that decision to make an action game when your studio has always made FPS games.
Then they switched their focus to F2P and by the time they released the game that market was way over saturated as well and nobody was interested.
To top it all off they just try to create a half assed subscription model to try to match with what Epic is doing. The difference is Epic is actually offering a service, and Crytek is not doing anything. Epic has huge updates every month or less, they are constantly putting up tutorial videos, creating example content, and documenting everything is great detail. Crytek on the other hand do not do any of that and I do not see why I would pay for that.
I feel bad because I know some people that work for Crytek, but they are just completely lost in the business decisions they have been making over the years.
to me Cevat feels like a dodgy businessman while Sweeney is a good old hardcore nerd at heart.
I agree with you in that I feel that Crytek - or more precisely the management - seems to run after the hip things (first consoles, then F2P and as a result being late to both), but did you actually follow the subscription model since it's release? Since release Crytek has updated the engine nearly every week, they also constantly keep updating the documentation and releasing assets (or updating old ones to PBR) that you can use in your games for free. And they seem to keep their promise of more source access - the last two updates included source access for multiple systems.
Of course not everything is perfect, the documentation still has areas that are lacking or are oudated, and they haven't released video tutorials like Epic, but you are exaggerating when you say Crytek does not do anything of that.
Yea, I'm working on a project in CE right now and I have to say that they've done a lot since it went on Steam. There are a lot of preview assets to check out.
Obviously, they still have a lot to work on; however, I feel like a lot of people hate on CryEngine just to hate on it, without actually trying to MAKE something with it. It's pretty fantastic to get some assets in engine quickly with great dynamic lighting without having to bake any light-maps.
http://kotaku.com/sources-crytek-uks-staff-are-currently-on-leave-1599923133
Not looking good for the UK office...
I really hope people land on their feet from this. Terrible situation to be in.
Well let me put it like this. I guess i have a Full Disclosure moment right here. lol. I don't have bad wishes on Crytek employees. But Crytek the company rubbed me the wrong way when they assured blender users that they'd add support for us but that support only materialized as a half assed static mesh importer that a member of the community made on his own without help from Crytek. So maybe I do sort of secretly hate Crytek management on some subconscious level. Cuz I was a fresh faced little game dev kiddo back then. I had all my hopes and dreams invested in them. And they led me on. It just wasn't cool.
I've listened a podcast with Unity, 4A Games and Unigine engine architects and the Unigine CEO said that Crytek failed to break in the simulation industry in a signifficant fashion while Unigine failed to take a foothold in games market but is doing quite well in simulation.
Can you share the link to that podcast? I would really appreciate it.
My experience with Sims is that unless you have some kind of dedicated rig for the simulator itself, then chances are its going to need to be able to run on a pretty wide range of hardware, including a big selection of lower end machines that likely didn't have games in mind when they were acquired. They'll aim for something they can install just about anywhere, without needing new computers to go along with it. I can't see cryengine being used the same way I saw vbs and unity.
http://www.huntthegame.com/
https://arenaoffate.com/ and so on..
they try to differentiate their products to improve market share. Most of them are newly produced titles popped up at almost same time. It makes sense from purely bussinessman pov but in the creative industries like this one I'm not sure about outcome of revolving multiple plates at the same time.
in a company.. Its not only crytek - there alot of other companys, who havin huge
management troubles.. Cant say enough - its a great plattform to recieve and write feedback!
As a german - its really said to see one of two of our AAA studios going down eventually.
I wish they land on their feed - hope the management hear and respect their employees and DO something.
I also wish, that germany will have more AAA studios in the future!
I believe he is talking about Russian game dev podcast. Here is the link just in case somebody wants to check it out. http://galyonkin.com/
He is not wrong, the Cryengines knee jerk reaction to UE4s affordable subscription based policy doesn't change the ethos of cryengine and crytek at its core, the documentation has always been poor to start with, and no sub, no engine, and everyones heard the horror stories about ambiguous royalty fees.
Cryengine for me only had the advantage in superior lighting, to which UE4 has largely rectified, I could simply not see a reason why any person would want to use cryengine over UE4 other than being accustomed to it, hell id sooner use Unity free to make a game over cryengine, or game maker studio for that matter.
My sympathies here are with the employees who beyond clearly suffering from mismanagement didn't get PAID for the work they did, which is just unacceptable and further shows the ethos crytek carries with it.
200 staff members didn't just risk their professional and financial situations over nothing, especially in this jobs market.
Currently I am using CE and UE4 simultaneously to see their strong/weak points.
The only strong " TECHNICAL" point I would put CE over UE4 be... performance.
When I just look through free example levels my PC goes F1 car engine on me, both fans goes crazy and even with that around 25 FPS in editor. To get fluid developer experience you need to " Build" the game. Well that takes.... 6-8 hours depending on your project.
In CE I open a 16 km square level full of... everything with great lighting and I just do whatever I wanto to do. Thyere are really times when FPS drops ( like deep fog or the like) but I can give an overall 30+ FPS. And if I want to see end result, well I can just switch to game instantly. That is all. No fuss no muss.
Right now with all the rumors around and possibility to be sold at Sony, the risk of my work going to be wasted since my EaaS license won't work is too great to take a chance. I am currently trying to go indie ( that is why I am trying he both engines) and let's say... after 3 months something happened EaaS service is held, stopped, sold whatever... Then what ???
Also 150+ video tutorials for every aspect leaves no excuse for a serious developer.
Man I sometimes just want to see Hideo Kojima giving green light t his Fox Engine to be released. Last September he said " they want to polish it even more to present a better experience for developers".
If that had come out. No brainer man... No brainer...
I mean there are several engines, aside from Fox, i would love to see used by the public and see what they are capable of. Like Frostbyte or ofcourse Lumnious Engine which is kind of this mythical beeing that no one seems to be quite sure what it really is capable of.
That is exactly why I love this place. Thank you kind sir
I am quite sure they can. I even remember multiple people telling them to do the exact same thing. I even remember nyself saying " Just Frnakfurt and a side studio. 150+50. Frankfurt for the engine and side studio for the exclusive games."