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Crytek Closing Five Studios, Will Refocus On 'Premium IPs' and CryEngine (polygon.com)
In a press release, Crytek, the developer behind hits such as the Crysis and Far Cry shooters, announced that it will be closing five of its studios in an effort to "refocus on its core strengths." The only studios remaining will be Crytek's Frankfurt, Germany and Kiev, Ukraine locations. Polygon reports: Other than Crytek's Frankfurt headquarters and Kiev studio, which develops free-to-play shooter Warface, the company held offices in Budapest, Hungary; Sofia, Bulgaria; Seoul, Korea; Shanghai, China; and Istanbul, Turkey. Crytek's co-founder and managing director, Avni Yerli, said in the release that the "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," he added. The studio will now focus on its CryEngine technology, which is used by many other developers and licensors. Crytek said it will also continue to "develop and work on premium IPs."
They had how many studios against the backdrop of having how many money-making projects? What did anyone expect to happen?
Look, just put some dinosaurs into Far Cry. That's all I need. I'll buy 10 copies. You made "Far Cry Primal" which was on the right track, but then you stopped short. Load that thing up with dinosaurs. Tons of them. Make the Jurassic Park game that we've wanted since Trespasser was a train wreck.
industry.
While they provide(d) housing for employees, at least in their Main campus in Bavaria, the pay is way below industry average. I'm not surprised they are going downhill when not able to retain good people.
curious, what is that industry average?
make us a more agile, viable, and attractive studio, primed for future success
In other words; the owners want to sell the company.
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How did they go from Far Cry and Crysis 1-3 to bankruptcy twice. Why didn't they close 5 studios last time around?
Where's Crysis 4 or their spritual successor to Far Cry? Ever since failure of Ryse Crytek runs around like a headless chicken. With 3 brothers you would at least 1 of them get it right
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Requiem for the American Dream
I was wondering what where the studios that are shutting down developing?
For having so many studios I have not heard about many games that crytek where making.
Also can someone tell me the CryEngine the article is talking about that is part of there core strength is that still the same CryEngine that Crysis ran on back in 2007? Not exactly state of the art now is it.
Do management types actually think that using marketing speak makes a positive impression on people?
A few years back they said they were going to stop developing Triple A titles because it was too expensive and not profitable. They instead refocused and free to play games and released games like Warface. Now it seems they're swapping back to premium IPs after that strategy failed.
I hope they survive because the CryEngine is consistently the most impressive engine, but apparently the documentation is terrible so few games use it.
Oh, yeah, that company that made a bit of noise back in the mid 00's, decided to consolise and hasn't done anything of note since.
Colour me surprised that they're going out of business.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A refocus is normal. A dont'-pay-your-worker-for-month is not. The problem is that they went too big too quick, and did have nothing to show for it.
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Can it run Crysis now?
I couldn't give less a shit about the majority of things Crytek does. (besides Engines development)
The ONLY thing I give a shit about is: why do you still have Timesplitters when you have no intentions of doing anything with it?
The fan community do and you keep fucking with them. (like forcing them to switch engine midway through development)
Please sell it, or open source it.
Trying to use TS Rewind as free advertising for your tools is hardly a good thing when you piss off the developers of said fan-project.
Social media is not representative of the gaming community at large.
The social media meme is the worst thing to happen to media production because companies assume EVERYONE EVER is on social media. So apparently that means if you don't get 20 trillion likes on things, it means nobody is interested.
Protip: doesn't work like that.
Just like how Nielsons shitty TV viewership system is a lie. Only certain outgoing people are interested in such systems. Introverts, private people, they have different interests than most of those types that would be open to having their watching habits measured. This is why reality TV and shitty drama comedy is so common now. The masses of retards skew viewership figures so much. So does social media.
Your games provably never sold well, just enough to pay for the next game. (of course, even that is dubious given you are now closing studios!) /.
Yet you owned an IP that basically sold the PS2 multitap and many PS2s alone.
Realistic shooters are not good. You will never get the CoD audience. The CoD audience itself are dying. (interest in the same shit shooter is way down)
Something like Timesplitters would sell like crazy right now if it had the same goofy, smooth animated whacky time travelling hijinks.
People want something crazy. They don't want real. They've finally grown past puberty now. They want something fun as the depression of adutlhood sets.
No, you'll not get the generation of kids younger, they are iPhone kiddies now. Or Minecraft. They don't have consoles.
Why create average-to-low games when you can create something that will sell your entire companies worth and then some?
But hey, I'm just some dick with anger issues on the
Read this same story yesterday except the source reported they're also not paying their employees. Some just got paid for the month of October.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Designing games would be easy, I wonder why Crytek couldn't make good money.
Here is an idea for companies: shitty games, nobody wants them
You can't all be Hello Games and heist people for money like I think they did with No Man's Sky, a game so bland and simplistic, people ought to have known that was a game for kids that didn't know any better.
... like Star Citizen?