Crytek UK in trouble: Staff leaving left and right

More than 30 employees have left Crytek UK since work began on Homefront: The Revolution in 2011, Eurogamer reports. The high turnover is due to staff being paid late numerous times, and the list of those who've left includes key art, design and programming employees, the site says. Crytek UK Managing Director Karl Hilton is leaving his position for a different role in the company, he told Kotaku.

This week, German magazine GameStar reported that Crytek was nearing bankruptcy. Crytek denied the claim:

"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. We continue to focus on the development and publishing of our upcoming titles Homefront: The Revolution, Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, Arena of Fate, and Warface, as well as providing ongoing support for our CryEngine and its licensees."

Homefront: The Revolution publisher Deep Silver has declined to comment on the situation. However, claims of trouble aren't contained to Crytek UK, Kotaku reports: Crytek's sequel to Xbox One launch game Ryse has been canceled, along with a slew of other games, including original prototypes.

Being paid late? Definitely sounds like they're nearing bankruptcy if that's true because that's a pretty good early warning sign.

That's too bad. That kind of stuff always sucks.

Who can stick around when you're not getting paid on time?

Yeah it sounds like the cashflow problems have begun.
It's a matter of time now, there were claims last week crytek proper was going bankrupt right?

Getting paid late? Rumors Crytek is nearing bankruptcy?

Man, it seems RYSE really hurt them. If they were suffering, they should have made as many multiplats as possible across PS360Wii instead of moving next gen and making an exclusive, all or nothing mediocre game.

Speaking of ryse.....

A recent report from German magazine GameStar claimed Crytek, which has its headquarters in Frankfurt, was in financial trouble and that the development of Xbox One exclusive Ryse: Son of Rome had been a "disaster".

Our colleagues at Eurogamer Germany looked into the report, and gave me the following translation:

"'The vultures are circling already,' so says a leading employee of one of the large publishers. Companies like this have already started making offers to the most talented people at Crytek, to hire them away. Such a brain drain can become dangerous for any studio, even a financially stable one.

The company could do with letting go a couple hundred of its employees, why Crytek needs 800 employees is beyond me.

They have 800 employees?!?!? Across how many studios?

When in doubt blame Lems for not buying Ryse.

796 employees as of 2013 according to Wiki and according to Gamestar and dsogaming:

Additionally, Crytek has more than 800 employees (a number so huge that explains the company’s possible financial issues). Moreover, Gamestar reported that salaries were paid late and leading employees were sending applications to other studios at home and abroad.

This is what happens when Graphics are your Key Selling Point and not Gameplay.

Lol one game isn't going to bankrupt a studio. With that said MS or Sony Should either buy them or hire all the people leaving and form a new studio. Crytek has a lot of talented devs and i hate to see people get laid off. especially those that make games

Yeah, that's kind of stupid. Reminds me of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. They did the same stupid crap. Their game was actually better then Ryse.

...or blame Crytek for only making two above average games since 2004

It all went downhill after the first Crysis.

That is definitely a shame. No one likes to hear this news.

The next time i see Phil (about 5 minutes) I will ask him to buy Crytek just to help them out of this horrible situation.

or Ryse was a financial failure compared to Crysis, Crysis 2, Crysis WH and Crysis 3 which did pretty well.

Holy cannoli. That's unfortunate for Crytek fans.

Should have just stuck with your main platform, the PC.

You get greedy and you meet the same fate as Capcom.

that is what happens when you work and make deals with M$, good for them.

@Animal-Mother said:

More than 30 employees have left Crytek UK since work began on Homefront: The Revolution in 2011, Eurogamer reports. The high turnover is due to staff being paid late numerous times, and the list of those who've left includes key art, design and programming employees, the site says. Crytek UK Managing Director Karl Hilton is leaving his position for a different role in the company, he told Kotaku.

This week, German magazine GameStar reported that Crytek was nearing bankruptcy. Crytek denied the claim:

"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. We continue to focus on the development and publishing of our upcoming titles Homefront: The Revolution, Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, Arena of Fate, and Warface, as well as providing ongoing support for our CryEngine and its licensees."

Homefront: The Revolution publisher Deep Silver has declined to comment on the situation. However, claims of trouble aren't contained to Crytek UK, Kotaku reports: Crytek's sequel to Xbox One launch game Ryse has been canceled, along with a slew of other games, including original prototypes.

All i saw was 'Free radical in trouble' which saddens me greatly

Goldeneye

Perfect Dark

Timesplitters

Timesplitters 2

Timesplitters future perfect

Second sight.

Sad day for the industry.

Yep they should have build up a royal fanbase and actually establish a modding community that could have help keep their game alive for years. And wasn't Capcom primary console lol

Crytek's legacy is Far Cry and Crysis. The worst thing about Ryse is that it was a launch title for a new system - very small install base(plus Ryse is a bad game).

And Crysis one sold 3 million units on PC alone, Cyrsis 2 sold 3 million across three platforms - in a way that is well, but it is a big drop off as well.

This is what you get for abandoning the PC and went for consoles.

Well deserved. Now GTFO or have a taste of your own medicine by having a second look at the original Crysis and think how successful that was.

@delta3074: Who knows, somebody else might get the Timesplitters IP?

It happen.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios

For those of you saying haha and good riddance I hope you lose your jobs and have to struggle to support your family.

I honestly didn't see much of a point with them even dedicating resources in putting their games on console since they never had sold massive sales and fell short behind the first Crysis on PC. Crysis 3 was even more of a let down concerning sales.

They lost many loyal pc fanbase and also didn't even make a sdk for Crysis 3.

Cyberdot, you're gonna have to remove that stick eventually!

Lol yeah thats the 1 case in history but it was also a new company started by a baseball player and that was their 1 and only game they made. Crytek has been around for 15 years and have made 8 games with 4 more in development and also have their cryengine that they license out and own several IPs.

But it's happened. So you can't say one game isn't going to bankrupt a studio.

In cryteks case it's been a bunch of mediocre games and seemingly bad business decisions.

"Instead of focusing on the core strengths of the company, which would be the [Crytek] engine and innovative PC titles, we simply jumped at every next big thing in the industry," said a Crytek employee.

lol this is what happens when your out of touch from your roots

Yes it did happen. But many studios out there have made a "bad game that didn't sell well" and it didn't bankrupt them. So I should rephrase it and say "very rarely has a company ever gone bankrupt from one bad game" And if you say its a bunch of mediocre games and bad decisions, then its not 1 game that caused it. I'm not saying they won't go bankrupt. I doubt it, but its possible. My point was that If they do go bankrupt it'll have nothing to do with 1 particular game. Also FWIW Ryse did supposedly sell around a million copies which isn't a big enough flop to bankrupt them. that means crytek got about 30 million off the game (plus whatever MS funded) I'd be surprised if they didn't actually make money on it

No, as i've said it has officially been proven to happen BUT in cryteks case a series of bad decisions.

and i agreed that it has happened 1 time in the past 30 years and corrected myself to say "very rarely has a company ever gone bankrupt from one bad game " so what exactly is your point?

My point is you're wrong. Also i'd love to see you back up you're made up statistic.

Seems like Crytek just jumped on the next train but didn't check where it was going.

This is what happens when you only make tech demos in an industry that mostly uses inhouse game engines.

Well my question is where did it all go wrong?

With reports that their engine isn't getting out into the market as well as they hoped, coupled with this news, Crytek may be facing some dire times.

Also, perhaps Ryse hurt them more than some people are willing to say. Sure, Ryse sold a million copies (I believe), but we can't use sold copies as the only point of information. We've got to look at development costs against what was actually brought in.

Where there's smoke there's fire. They are done for. That's very unfortunate.

Don't think this has anything to do with Microsoft. DR3 sold over a million copies and so has Forza 5. I think Ryse sold bad because it was just an average game and got a lot of bad reviews. The Crysis games were all multiplat, so of course those sold more copies. They were on PC, PS3 and XBox 360. That's a huge, huge install base. Crytek would have been better off releasing Ryse on the XBox 360 first and then releasing it later on the XB1 once it had a larger user base.

Buying tech demos aren't my thing . Far cry, Crysis 1 and warhead were good and worth purchasing. They clearly stopped developing because if passion and started to buy into their own hype and got greedy. If they go bankrupt its because they got too greedy and wanted too much of the pie.

Not a fan of any of their games, but it sucks to see companies in trouble nonetheless.

I'm not one to wish harm on a developer. But, after many years of indulging one of my favorite hobbies, the gaming landscape is littered with game developers that went under. Crytek just happens to be the next candidate.

The tears ran out decades ago.