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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."
It's only natural for companies to refocus their activities every 10 years or so. Bloat tends to sneak in and the organization starts to slowly turn into a supermarket – something for everyone. Sometimes you may find your business' core outside what everyone thought was your core business. Think for example Nokia who even themselves thought they were a mobile phone manufacturing company. They had over the years, however, accumulated an insane amount of mobile network IP and were excelling in this area without realizing it. After the Elop episode they had to rethink their whole business model and as it happened, they found themselves in the mobile network business and are pulling in record profits.