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Crytek Giving Away CryEngine To UK Universities
GamesIndustry reports that German game developer Crytek will be making CryEngine, the game engine behind Far Cry and Aion, available to universities in the UK for free. They're doing so because they want new college grads to get hands-on experience with the technology that runs real games. Crytek's Karl Hilton said, "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are. It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a videogame. The more we can get involved with them and give them feedback and access to the tools involved, the more accurate the course will become in training people up."
Note that Emergent has been doing the same for their engine Gamebryo for a few years now: Emergent Academic Partners.
Except this is the CryEngine 1, not CryEngine 2 which is their main engine. While programming is undoubtably similar for both engines, going back to Far Cry it's already begining to look dated, and game made with it would probably make a decent Indie release, but wouldn't do as a commercial release graphics wise.
It would however, as you suggested, float the better programmers on these courses to the surface.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I think it's important to remember that the Unreal Engine has been free for educational use for a very long time. No doubt that there will be a similar number of restrictions on the CryEngine, mostly along the lines of not being able to reuse any code or assets for any future release. I imagine, however, that the unreal engine is probably a lot more useful to students as it is used in a much larger number of games or varying genres.