Wednesday, December 14th 2016
Crytek's Woes Not Finished - Renowned Developer Not Paying Wages Again
Renowned games studio Crytek hasn't left the ropes yet - and the situation is again looking dire for the company. After a rough 2014 that saw multiple upcoming games being canceled (with a sequel to the graphical masterpiece Ryse being canned at this time) and employees not getting paid for months at a time, only the sale of franchises and assets (Homefront's IP to Deep Silver, for one), as well as a licensing deal with Amazon for their Crytek engine (worth $70 million), managed to save the company. At the time, employees put the blame on less than solid management decisions towards pushing the company as a free-to-play powerhouse, blaming the management for poor handling of the studio's transition towards that form of monetization. However, efforts to stay afloat seem to have been little more than a small lifeboat for the company.Recently, reports from inside the studio guarantee that wages are not being paid properly again, with salaries over the course of 2016 having been delayed several months or not paid at all. According to Kotaku, staff in Crytek's main office in Frankfurt, Germany have not received checks in nearly three months. And apparently, Crytek management informed the staff last Friday that the company was trying to secure funding from various sources- through loans and perhaps asset sales - but had not yet succeeded. People from Crytek's other studios in Budapest and Sofia have also reported missing payments, while Crytek's Glassdoor is full of complaints about the company not paying staff on time.Recently, the company released two high-quality, VR-centric games in "Robinson: The Journey" and "The Climb", with copious amounts of the studios' liquidity flowing to these two projects. I can't certainly be called an expert in this matters, and I clearly don't have the full picture for why and how these decisions were made; that said, I do find it disconcerting that a studio would put so many resources behind two games developed for a frankly immature ecosystem, where the user base isn't, apparently, capable of absorbing this kind of releases in volume enough to generate tidy profits. Jumping into the VR bandwagon so soon and so deeply may have been another crucial misstep for the company's management, akin to the free-to-play blunder that landed the company in trouble in 2014. I hope the signs aren't definite, and I hope that I'm wrong, because if there ever was a studio focused on pushing the boundaries of graphics and their game design, it's Crytek.
Source:
Kotaku
45 Comments on Crytek's Woes Not Finished - Renowned Developer Not Paying Wages Again
Also, if Crytek would finally realize that they have to make another Crysis game to return to profitability, well... then they'd make some money.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!
/sarcasm
Also, I have not heard them blame the long development time on their choice of game engine. I'm pretty sure it is because of the size and complexity of the project, and has not been unanticipated.
There are many developers who have stated that they should have chosen Unreal.
I'm well aware of the personal vendetta you have against SC because you think they are taking too long. You started an entire other thread on the subject that eventually got shut down.
The reason my SC thread was locked was because many reported the thread simply because they disagreed with the opinions expressed by various Backers and myself.
What is this, the Soviet Union?
Another crysis game would save them especially if people thought it would be their last.
Also I agree with HisDivineOrder on the employment as well. 2014, shame on crytek, still there when it happens again in 2016? shame on the employees. They should have jumped ship to another studio and crytek should have closed when no one capable of making a game wanted to work for them.
Then the IP and Brand could be sold to someone more capable. That is the nature of the gaming business.