Crytek Reportedly in Financial Trouble

[Dohc-WP]

Crysis developer Crytek has been late in paying its staff, and there has been an exodus of employees for several months, according to published reports. However, Crytek says the reports are untrue.

Kotaku reported that employees claim they’re working in an unstable environment, with several high-level staff members leaving their studios in Germany and the UK. One employee estimates more than 100 people have left Crytek over the past three months.

The story first came to light after German magazine GameStar reported financial troubles at Crytek, with anonymous sources claiming projects like Ryse: Son of Rome for the Xbox One were a “disaster” for the developer.

Employees also claimed they'd been paid late, sometimes by several months. However, upper management has assured the staff that there will be a fresh infusion of cash soon that should right the ship. Employees are also reportedly concerned that the studio is moving away from triple-A titles like Crysis, and is self-publishing free-to-play titles like Arena of Fate and the recently released Warface.

Crytek is developing Homefront: The Revolution for Deep Silver, a sequel to Homefront, released by THQ in 2011.

Crytek told Eurogamer, “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.” Kotaku says they have not received a response from Crytek on their reporting.

Source IGN

 

[DieGrootHammer]

I read somewhere that it's also due to very little interest into their engine from other developers that's causing further strain on the company. Their Crytek engine is not as popular as they imagined and may even be losing them money...

I really hope that all these rumours are just that, rumours. They are not a bad studio and their games have been awesome in the past. It would be a shame for them to close down. Hopefully they can rectify some financial woes with Homefront 2

 

[Neo]

If you compare games built on the cryengine and games built on the Unreal 3 engine...I personally think the games on the unreal engine look just as good and run better on lesser hardware. I've always admired the visual fidelity of the cryengine, but I've also always felt that the engine requires more hardware to run than what should be necessary.

Still, it's never good to hear that someone might be closing their doors because it basically closes the doors on all of the great stuff that might have come from them. Who know? Many game-changing technologies could have come from companies that closed a little too soon. And now we'll never know.