Crytek Shuts Down Five Studios Amid Financial Difficulties

In a press release, the publisher said, "Crytek will concentrate on development in its Frankfurt and Kiev studios and continue to develop and work on premium IPs.

"All other development studios will not remain within Crytek and management has put plans into action to secure jobs and to ensure a smooth transition and stable future."

The company's co-founder and managing director, Avni Yerli, continued: "Undergoing such transitions is far from easy, and we'd like to sincerely thank each and every staff member--past and present--for their hard work and commitment to Crytek. These changes are part of the essential steps we are taking to ensure Crytek is a healthy and sustainable business moving forward that can continue to attract and nurture our industry's top talent. The reasons for this have been communicated internally along the way. Our focus now lies entirely on the core strengths that have always defined Crytek--world-class developers, state-of-the-art technology, and innovative game development, and we believe that going through this challenging process will make us a more agile, viable, and attractive studio, primed for future success."

The news comes shortly after it was reported that Crytek had not paid some employees for six months. Reports at the time also stated that Crytek Black Sea (the company's studio in Sofia, Bulgaria) was up for sale.

Sucks for the employees but not surprising. Crytek hasn't made a decent game since Warhead. Not many outside devs seem to be using Cryengine either. Not to my knowledge at least.

Link

Never played any of their games, so cant say will be missed.

Just saw this and yup, not the best time of year to get the pink slip. :(

Just occurred to me, perhaps Trump can save'em? :P

Isn't this old? They closed some studios a while ago, should of stuck to PC gaming and selling their engine greed has bit them in the ass so hard they can't recover.

Excellent, Christmas came early.

I think that was in 2014 when they shut down Crytek USA.

Crytek's upper management seems like someone has a bag full of squirrels and randomly pulls one out of the bag every few months to determine their strategy. The company hasn't been relevant in the better part of a decade at this point. They haven't made an actually game since Crysis 3, and Warface is a Russian/Korean F2P FPS that isn't even available in major markets.

They still had 7 studios after the last financial trouble. How the hell were they paying such a workforce while not producing anything!

They haven't recovered from Ryse.

yup, thanks MS...

Their unwillingness and slow move to license their engine at a cheaper price was their main downfall and not the diversifying of their game developments.

I didn't know they had that many. I thought they were simply one studio.

I guess now they are. Luck to them.

I wonder if they were having financial difficulties because they had 5+ studios and were not releasing any notable games......

why did they even have so many studios?

seems like a very poorly managed company

On top of that, they weren't even paying some of them on time.

@SecretPolice: he's gonna bring jobs back to America I guarantee it! Believe me!

Nobody knows what these studios were doing.

And apparently Crytek didn't even know they had them.

I still defend Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 were good games. But other than that, yeah, they havent made a good game to save their lives

@SecretPolice: sounds like they already worked for him. Not paying people for their work is his MO

They expanded way too quickly and didn't have the products and sales to support such expansion. Most of their best engineers have left for other studios leaving them with not much core talent to continue to build their products.

Great news, sad news for the employees but the company deserves to suffer for being the sellouts that they are.

Why would the president-elect be concerned over a foreign-owned company?

agreed, the stupid amount of hate surrounding both those games is ridiculous. i felt they were quality games and enjoyed them quite a bit.

why on earth did they have so many studios? did they think they were successful like EA and ubisoft?

This.

Feels really good after they gave their fans the middle finger after Warhead. Hopefully Crytek dies soon and let the little talent they have left go and work on something that isn't poo.

I thought Crysis 2 was ok but not on the same level as 1. The story wasn't as good and the game was repetitive. I never played 3 because I lost interest after 2.

@onesiphorus:

:P

Crysis 2/3 suck. Crysis 3 sold 5 copies, even console gamers didn't care.

What the heck were they doing with those studios? Crytek Budapest is the only one that produced a game (crysis warhead) out of all those studios closing down and it was 8 years ago.

Free Radical staff need to abscond with the Timesplitters IP and establish an indie studio and start a Kickstarter. I'd put $100 towards a new TS game, easily.

Free Radical/Crytec UK closed down in 2014. Most the staff went to Dambuster Studio where they made the hit game Homefront: The Revolution.

I wish a big publisher would buy crytek. their engine is amazing and they have talent. contrary to popular belief i actually liked their games. all 3 crysis games were at least decent and ryse was pretty good to. Someone can buy them. have them make a ryse sequal and crysis sequal and own the crytek engine.

I didn't even know they had 5 studios left. Some part of me pities them, another part of me doesn't.

I thought they didn't get a fair shake back when Crysis 2 released, great game, lots of fun, even the online was pretty fun, but man was the hate against it pretty unwarranted. It was far more fun than the original Crysis, I don't know why PC gamers act like it's some Far Cry game that it's not. I also thought Ryse also got shat on unfairly, probably most likely to do with the sentiments regarding the Xbox One at launch and pretty much everybody shitting on everything great just because it was on Xbox One, like Dead Rising 3 too.

Anyhow, they also did make many bad choices I won't defend. I think buying Free Radical after the shit they pulled with misappropriating funds for Star Wars Battlefront 3 to finish that turd of a "Halo killer" Haze, they acquired them to work on another precarious IP like Homefront, are you effing kidding me?

MS offered to keep them afloat by funding Ryse 2, on condition MS retain rights to the Ryse IP, which Crytek turned down; hell that's on them. Though, what I read was Crytek knew this day was coming and were holding onto the Ryse IP as an asset to sell once they go through bankruptcy proceedings. Kind of a shit idea since anybody they offer the IP to is going to know how desperate they are and use that to leverage their bargaining position, they'll get it for next to nothing. They should have taken MS's offer. At this point though, if I were MS, I'd probably not make another offer, you'd still need Crytek to develop it and at this point I'm sure their finances have significantly reduced their abilities to put out a worthwhile game, it's not worth it anymore.

They still haven't made a good game since Crysis 1.

Never did bother with Crysis 3 and I got it for free. lol