11 ms·

Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

129 points by doppp 9y ago

bobsgame 9y ago
CryEngine is amazing technology and CryTek is a great company. I believe there must be merit to this. Star Citizen is also a very cool project and so I hope they work things out together. I want both companies to be very successful.
- throwaway13337 9y ago
  The engine used to certainly be impressive. The company, though, had quite a bit of trouble paying their employees in the last year or two: https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees-not-paid https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees... They're more of a struggling company. But hey, at least they deliver a product.
  - JohnStrange 9y ago
    This lawsuit won't help them a bit, though. They're struggling because they gained a persistent reputation among gamers that games built with their engine are beautiful but unplayable on any normal hardware. Whenever I hear "CryEngine" I think of the "But will it run Crysis?" joke. Maybe they should have rebranded it, but in any case they seem to have done something wrong about their business in comparison to, say, Unity.
- devwastaken 9y ago
  I don't think they're that great. The engine is great, certainly, but crytek as a game company not so much. They were at their best when Crysis 1 was made, where you could have your own servers and mod things and communities were built. But the second they could get into the Call of Duty userbase, they actually deleted all their mod forums, which included hundreds of thousands of posts and thousands of mods and configs for servers. All to 'make room' for Crysis 2 'modding', which was non-existant because you could not own your own servers, and server sizes were tiny.
- OhSoHumble 9y ago
  I would not describe CryTek as a great company; they've skipped out paying their employees numerous times. https://www.pcgamesn.com/crytek-wage-crisis-black-sea-studio https://www.pcgamesn.com/crytek-wage-crisis-black-sea-studio
synicalx 9y ago
tl;dr if you can't be bothered reading through all the legal fidgey widgey - Crytek is claiming CIG breached their contract by doing the following: - Publishing Squadron 42 as a seperate game (licence was only for one game, Star Citizen) - CIG fiddled with/remove Crytek's branding in loading screens etc (they weren't supposed to) - Cryengine was not exclusively used for Star Citizen (apparently it also leverages Lumberyard) - CIG did not provide bug fixes and optimisations for Cryengine (they were supposed to) - CIG disclosed Cryengine "secrets" without permission via online videos, and also via collaboration with a third party Not sure on the amount, the only dollar figure quoted is 'in excess of $75,000'. Not sure if that means $76,000 or $1mil though - IANAL!
- throwaway13337 9y ago
  Interesting to note that Lumberyard is a licensed Cryengine fork.
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    Given that CIG has relicensed under Lumberyard, is it possible that Crytek has a case here? I guess it depends on the contract, but I can't really imagine that CGI locked themselves into a contract to only ever use CryEngine for Star Citizen - wouldn't there have to be a specific clause that gives the dollar amount due in such a case that Star Citizen is either cancelled or switched to a different engine?
    - tedivm 9y ago
      This wasn't a simple "we used this engine" type of deal- Crytek invested a lot in the kickstarter by supplying expertise and helping to build demos, and in return for that they promised to use the engine. This was meant to help promote Crytek as well, and that is why they invested in it. Specifically- > In that Agreement, Defendants promised, among other things, (i) to use the CryEngine game development platform exclusively and to promote that platform within the video game, (ii) to collaborate with Crytek on CryEngine development, and (iii) to take a number of steps to ensure that Crytek's intellectual property was protected.
devwastaken 9y ago
>22. On December 16, 2015, Defendants announced that "Squadron 42," a single-player video game involving space combat, would be sold separately from Star Citizen. >25. On February 14, 2016, Defendants moved forward with their plan for Squadron 42 notwithstanding their failure to obtain a license and began offering the video game for separate purchase. As a result, Defendants are intentionally and willfully using CryEngine without a license and in violation of copyright laws. This seems to be the main point. They're claiming Star Citizen is using CryEngine for their new game, and haven't licensed it out to do that, along with the company behind Star Citizen distributing assets of Cryengine in various ways. They were also supposed to help in developement of Cryengine in way of bug fixes, and did not comply. Crytek's GLA appears to be pretty far reaching. >38. On December 23, 2016, Defendants announced that they were using the Amazon Lumberyard video game engine for Star Citizen. The GLA did not permit Defendants to use any other video game engine in Star Citizen except for CryEngine. >50. On May 6, 2015, Defendants began posting a series of videos online titled "Bugsmashers." The videos contain excerpts of information from CryEngine that were confidential, in breach of the GLA, and should not have been shown to the public. The series continues today.
- jchw 9y ago
  What I'm confused about is this. I thought Star Citizen moved to Amazon Lumberyard, which I believe is a fork of CryEngine. What confidential information could they have that Lumberyard hasn't already put into the open?
  - rootlocus 9y ago
    > 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines.
    - jchw 9y ago
      Ah, that's interesting. I was referring to the claim that they revealed confidential information about Cry Engine, but that explains the meat of this lawsuit. I didn't read through the whole thing. I'm not a big follower of Star Citizen and frankly even with all of the evidence presented I'm not sure what the outcome should rightfully be, but it sounds to me like CIG is knee deep right now.
danielvf 9y ago
This suit seems a bit weak in places. For example they are sueing that they only licensed cryengine for one game, and yet RSI was planning on using it for two games. However the second game has never shipped, and RSI has switched both games over to the Amazon Lumberyard engine. This particular claim seems like it’s going to get thrown out. My guess is that we’ll see a settlement in this. It doesn’t seem like this going to hurt RSI very much.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  There's a reasonable point that from the time they started developing Squadron 42 to the time that they switched to Lumberyard, they were illegally using the engine. Additionally, it's been suggested that the "engine switch" was in name only/an attempt at evading the license fee. If in discovery, they can prove CryEngine is still in use, as opposed to actually being properly rebased on Lumberyard... There's a lot here, and Crytek has a lot of different claims. They only need one or two of the claims to stick for it to hurt.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    If they weren’t using Lumberyard, that would be more exciting, but CryTech claims RSI is, and some of their other claims are based on RSI having switched. They can’t have it both ways.
    - dsl 9y ago
      Sure they can. They moved the bulk of the engine over to Lumberyard and publicly announced that, but under the hood are probably using the more mature CryEngine where Lumberyard is lacking. EDIT: It gets more confusing, Lumberyard is apparently a hard fork of CryEngine that Amazon paid for. My guess is they switched to Lumberyard for better licensing terms, but kept all the enhancements made to CryEngine post-fork.
      - didibus 9y ago
        Amazon also made enhancements to Lumberyard since though. Not sure why you'd call one more mature then the other. Do you have experience with both and can attest that Lumberyard now lacks behind the latest CryEngine?
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This is the first time I've seen something amid all the wolf-crying about CIG and Star Citizen that could actually kill it. Crytek has a lot of claims, very likely reasonable merit for them, and more importantly: Crytek is desperate and needs the money. They have no reason to settle or back down. As a "concierge-level" backer (I'm embarrassed about it too, don't worry), I have a lot of concerns Crytek may end up with some or all of my money. That being said, I've never assumed a "purchase" with CIG was more than a crowdfund, and if it dies, that's how things go sometimes. I'm not angry, I'm not panicking, and I'm not joining the "demand a refund from CIG" party that a few people like to obsess about.
- leereeves 9y ago
  If they're desperate and need the money, they have a strong motive to settle instead of fighting a long lawsuit they might lose or wait through years of appeals and stalling tactics.
- TotallyHuman 9y ago
  Star Citizen backers are completely insane. They've received $100's of millions USD amd for what? An alpha proof of concept.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    The "alpha proof of concept" enables a certain amount of sandbox playability that no other game can replicate. Even in short play sessions, I've had an insane amount of fun figuring out if I can do things that simply wouldn't work in other games, and plenty of others on YouTube have done crazier. (A personal favorite was someone boarding an NPC ship.) I can't speak for everyone else, but I backed an idea. I gave money to someone who wanted to assemble a game with an unprecedented amount of flexibility and realism. Whether or not that actually makes a "good game" in the end. I invested in something I want to see happen. If it does not happen, that will be unfortunate, and I will be sad. But given that what they are trying to do is borderline insane, it will not be totally shocking if they fail.
drawkbox 9y ago
Lumberyard is a fork by Amazon of CryEngine that they licensed in 2015 that Star Citizen switched to. If developers start with that engine they are ok but looks like there were deals with Crytek on games/content before that date. Legal challenges from a game engine is something that can scare away new projects in that engine. This wouldn't affect most developers as Star Citizen signed with CryEngine but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon. Crytek is one of those companies that has great game engine tech but got high-centered when Unreal and Unity went free in 2015. Crytek is from the age of game development where licensing per game could run up above 300k for licenses and/or percentages that were much higher than today (Today Unreal is free but 5% royalties of gross over 3k quarterly -- but previously was 300k for the license -- Unity free up to 100k revs and $35/$125 Pro with no royalties, previously it was $1500 a year minimum). Crytek has been in a reactionary mode since 2015 when they also had to significantly change their model due to Unity/Unreal competitive moves. Unreal at 5% royalties over 3k a quarter, Unity at free to 100k annually and $35/$125 Pro after that and even Crytek at $50/mo, all are very helpful for game development skills. Previously when engines were hundreds of thousands for a license it was hard to even gain skills beyond modding tools for engines and game companies had to shoulder all the training costs of even good game devs. Today, Unity/Unreal skills are much easier to find because of the low cost of entry. Ultimately the change to subscriptions and low cost (relatively) of the licenses allows a good market for developers investing in skills that will immediately translate at the game company they are working at, much easier to hit the ground running. Ultimately access to the engines is more valuable than the up-front costs of the past. Crytek is still dealing with that competitive pressure most likely.
- make3 9y ago
  (Just kidding here) Unity and Unreal could merge into a company called U2. I wonder though if the FTC would let this unreal unity of game engines happen though
  - fazilakhtar 9y ago
    You gave me a much needed laugh. Thank you!
59nadir 9y ago
Crytek is a useless company that's been looking to make a quick buck by any means possible since they stopped making games for real. You only have to look at their recent development with 'Crycash' for yet another example. This is just another attempt at keeping cash flow positive, not by making games but by any other means possible. I wouldn't be surprised to see news in a few months or half a year saying Crytek are yet again not paying their employees.
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  Do you not consider making game engines and licensing their use to be a legitimate business model?
  - TylerE 9y ago
    Not especially? Look at how the pricing has come down on UE4 and Unity.
    - rtpg 9y ago
      It's still their product? I don't see how price has anything to do with legitimacy of license agreements
    - lacker 9y ago
      Well yes, but Unity is still a real company with a real business model, same as Crytek could be while only developing an engine.
- aluhut 9y ago
  > Crytek is a useless company that's been looking to make a quick buck by any means possible [...] This is just another attempt at keeping cash flow positive, not by making games but by any other means possible. Sounds very much like CIG. Maybe they should merge.
georgeecollins 9y ago
This does not seem to be the kind of suit where the outcome is likely to be devastating for Cloud Imperium. It could be expensive, but it seems like they should have the resources to settle.
huhtenberg 9y ago
This will now make a lot of gamedevs stop and pause when considering Crytek goods, so Crytek must be really desperate to resort to this sort of PR-hostile measures.
- mtgx 9y ago
  > so Crytek must be really desperate I think the last I heard of them they were almost into bankruptcy-mode, so yeah it does seem like they did this out of desperation. Still short-sighted, though.
  - joshschreuder 9y ago
    They're doing what I can only assume is a cashgrab crypto IPO too. http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/crycash-announces-its-token-sale-and-partners-with-crytek-immediately-bringing-cryptocurrency-to-20171210-00033 http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/crycash-announces-its-to...
- larkeith 9y ago
  On the other hand, if Star Citizen is really using an unlicensed instance of CryEngine for Squadron 42, that's a significant breach of contract, and effectively piracy. It seems absurd to avoid Crytek for responding with legal measures.
  - glenneroo 9y ago
    AFAIK they moved to the customized version of CryEngine (Amazon's Lumberyard) beginning of this year due to engine limits. They even hired some ex-CryEngine-devs to get things going but in the end they (supposedly) had no other choice but to switch. So theoretically they haven't been using CryEngine at all since an entire year.
    - larkeith 9y ago
      Amusingly, that's also part of the lawsuit - Crytek claim Star Citizen were contractually obligated to use CryEngine exclusively. It's somewhat irrelevant, as, if they used CryEngine at all for Squadron 42, even if only for development (especially if promotional footage/beta testing/etc was on CryEngine), that remains unacceptable.
bufferoverflow 9y ago
Well that's a nail in the coffin of Cryengine. Who would want to deal with lawsuits just for using a (kind of) free engine, when we have Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, StingRay, Source, Godot, Phyre, Blender?
- flohofwoe 9y ago
  You can scratch Stingray from the list unfortunately: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/stingray-end-of-sale-faq.html https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explor...
  - jarsin 9y ago
    HAHA Autodesk strikes again. Google should buy them..a match made in heaven.
- erikj 9y ago
  Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.
  - shak77 9y ago
    What are the numbers? Is Havok really mandatory? Wouldn't it be possible to replace Havok with Bullet or some other related system?
    - erikj 9y ago
      $25,000. Valve doesn't distribute Source without it, as far as I know. Replacing Havok would take a lot of effort which is better spent elsewhere.
      - Strom 9y ago
        Valve has been working on a physics engine called Rubikon since at least 2012. [1] Maybe it will be used to fully replace Havok in Source 2. -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTC0V0LWeGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTC0V0LWeGI [1] http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2014/Sergiy_Migdalskiy_Debugging_Techniques.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2014/Sergiy_Migdals... [1] http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Migdalskiy_Sergiy_Physics_Optimization_Strategies.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Migdalskiy_Ser...
jagermo 9y ago
I never understood why CR choose CryEngine. Yes, it can Single Player games make look beautiful, but when it comes to Multiplayer, it never really could compete with Unreal Engine. Just look how much work RSI has to do, to get the netcode working - and so far, they still are limited to 24 players. In addition, the requirements of the CryEngine have always been high, the FPS drops and a lot of other performance problems probably have to do a lot with that. I am not sure if the Unreal Engine would have allowed the detailed modeling of the ships, but to be honest, I can see no advantages of CryEngine compared to Unreal Engine. If you have any, please let me know, I've been racking my mind over this.
- cma 9y ago
  UE4 wasn't out when Star Citizen went into early pre-production. A lot of things changed in the licensing model betwen UE3 and UE4. If they wanted to hit their original launch window they probably would have had to have gone with UE3. And if they had still ended up slipping as bad as they now have they would be on something that was really outdated (though they probably would have announced a switch to UE4).
- stonith 9y ago
  IIUC they modified CryEngine to support a 64 bit coordinate system, and part of the reason this was possible was because they hired ex-Crytek devs to do it. Doing the same conversion in Unreal might not be feasible. I believe this is needed for the 'space scale' kind of stuff they're doing. So as far as why they chose CR, it might have been because they had access to devs that they didn't have in the case of UE3/UE4. As far as modelling goes it makes no difference - they're all made in 3dsmax/maya and then imported and both engines would be heavily optimised for that pipeline.
  - katastic 9y ago
    I haven't used the CryEngine but often times if you think you "need" a higher bit coordinate system (don't you mean 128-bit? ala long double? Doubles are already 64-bits and 80-bits internally.) you may be thinking of the problem in the wrong way. There's no reason you can't (in most games) have a segregated coordinate system. For example, where each star is the center, the (0,0,0) point. And when you warp from one star system to another, the new star is the new (0,0,0) point. Floats are great for huge distances, and tiny distances. They are horrific at BOTH at the same time... like say... adding a tiny fractional velocity vector per frame to an object millions or billions of units away. (There is a minimum amount you can add to a float without rounding down to the same original number, and the minimum change gets bigger the bigger the number is.) http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-programmer-should.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-prog... IIRC, KSP does the same thing and coordinates are to the nearest "planet of influence"--which has the affect of removing Lagrangian points for orbits but otherwise works great without needing custom math types which are much much slower than native types, and it doesn't require ripping out all of the assumptions that an entire engine (Unity in the case of KSP) runs on. When I created my own 2-D KSP, I ended up encountering all of these issues first-hand, and simply adding more precision didn't help nearly as much as segregating my coordinate system when we're talking about "astronomical" scales. So if they're actually using non-native types, or having to change the engine, then they better have damn good reasons to do it. You don't change something that fundamental unless you're insanely brash, or, you've got a very-carefully-thought-out hard requirement that cannot be worked around. If they really "need" space ships to have huge precision at any point in the universe regardless of proximity to a star, I would rather create "false/invisble stars" (almost like a quadtree/octree tree) where ever they are needed. Like when a huge fleet is moving around in free space, it would have a coordinate system following the capital ship. And if two groups of capital ships are attacking, you merge the coordinate systems.
kristofferR 9y ago
Tldr: Crytek allows Amazon to create a cheap fork of CryEngine, then sues CryEngine users that switch to it.
- usrusr 9y ago
  The strongest claim is that the original agreement was positioning SC as a showcase ad vehicle for cryengine, but, with CIG moving to the lumberyard fork, this is clearly not happening. Basically SC was married to cryengine until death do us apart, but now crytek is lying sick in deathbed and CIG have run off with their sister (because, despite all metaphors, CIG are still a company, not a spouse) instead of sitting at their bedside, holding hands as long as it takes.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  This is false. They sued one user who had a contract not to switch to other engines. > 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines. If you don't want to get sued, don't sign contracts and breach them.
- lazyman75 9y ago
  "Allows"? "Cheap"? AFAIK Amazon paid 75 millions for that ...
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  No. Here's a better tldr. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919833
bdemarchi 9y ago
Star Citizen is an amazing idea. That idea was funded by millions, including me. The people managing it should have never put our money on the line by not respecting whatever agreement they signed in the past. Review the agreements if necessary, but do not disregard them and put everyone hopes in the mud. Star Citizen community is not expecting to pay millions to settle that lawsuit if that was avoidable, and yes, the community gave that money, better thread carefull here. Reading the complains it seems CIG has just completely neglected the agreement. There might be a lawfull explanation to all of that, but if their description of the event is precise, the people managing the Star Citizen idea are at fault for not doing their best to protect it and should be questioned by the community. Have a nice day.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  I am a backer of Star Citizen but I am not sure that Crytek's claims should be taken completely at face-value. For instance, Crytek claims that Squadron 42 was announced to be offered as a stand-alone game in 2016 but I remember this being the public stance of CIG far before that. It sounds like Crytek failed to secure a comprehensive agreement covering the situation as it has developed over the years and is now attempting to make up for that lapse. And I imagine it's driven by the desperation that Crytek must feel being so close to insolvency. From what I remember they were also pretty peeved that CIG picked up some of their senior CryEngine engineers when Crytek was missing payroll.
puppetmaster40 9y ago
It appears similar to Google vs Oracle, where google won saying Android is not Java so no need to license. I consider Oracle lawyers poor - for example I can take an Apache Java jar and run it on Android.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

129 points by doppp 9y ago

CryEngine is amazing technology and CryTek is a great company. I believe there must be merit to this. Star Citizen is also a very cool project and so I hope they work things out together. I want both companies to be very successful.

throwaway13337 9y ago
The engine used to certainly be impressive. The company, though, had quite a bit of trouble paying their employees in the last year or two: https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees-not-paid https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees... They're more of a struggling company. But hey, at least they deliver a product.
- JohnStrange 9y ago
  This lawsuit won't help them a bit, though. They're struggling because they gained a persistent reputation among gamers that games built with their engine are beautiful but unplayable on any normal hardware. Whenever I hear "CryEngine" I think of the "But will it run Crysis?" joke. Maybe they should have rebranded it, but in any case they seem to have done something wrong about their business in comparison to, say, Unity.
devwastaken 9y ago
I don't think they're that great. The engine is great, certainly, but crytek as a game company not so much. They were at their best when Crysis 1 was made, where you could have your own servers and mod things and communities were built. But the second they could get into the Call of Duty userbase, they actually deleted all their mod forums, which included hundreds of thousands of posts and thousands of mods and configs for servers. All to 'make room' for Crysis 2 'modding', which was non-existant because you could not own your own servers, and server sizes were tiny.
OhSoHumble 9y ago
I would not describe CryTek as a great company; they've skipped out paying their employees numerous times. https://www.pcgamesn.com/crytek-wage-crisis-black-sea-studio https://www.pcgamesn.com/crytek-wage-crisis-black-sea-studio

synicalx 9y ago

tl;dr if you can't be bothered reading through all the legal fidgey widgey - Crytek is claiming CIG breached their contract by doing the following: - Publishing Squadron 42 as a seperate game (licence was only for one game, Star Citizen) - CIG fiddled with/remove Crytek's branding in loading screens etc (they weren't supposed to) - Cryengine was not exclusively used for Star Citizen (apparently it also leverages Lumberyard) - CIG did not provide bug fixes and optimisations for Cryengine (they were supposed to) - CIG disclosed Cryengine "secrets" without permission via online videos, and also via collaboration with a third party Not sure on the amount, the only dollar figure quoted is 'in excess of $75,000'. Not sure if that means $76,000 or $1mil though - IANAL!

throwaway13337 9y ago
Interesting to note that Lumberyard is a licensed Cryengine fork.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  Given that CIG has relicensed under Lumberyard, is it possible that Crytek has a case here? I guess it depends on the contract, but I can't really imagine that CGI locked themselves into a contract to only ever use CryEngine for Star Citizen - wouldn't there have to be a specific clause that gives the dollar amount due in such a case that Star Citizen is either cancelled or switched to a different engine?
  - tedivm 9y ago
    This wasn't a simple "we used this engine" type of deal- Crytek invested a lot in the kickstarter by supplying expertise and helping to build demos, and in return for that they promised to use the engine. This was meant to help promote Crytek as well, and that is why they invested in it. Specifically- > In that Agreement, Defendants promised, among other things, (i) to use the CryEngine game development platform exclusively and to promote that platform within the video game, (ii) to collaborate with Crytek on CryEngine development, and (iii) to take a number of steps to ensure that Crytek's intellectual property was protected.

devwastaken 9y ago

>22. On December 16, 2015, Defendants announced that "Squadron 42," a single-player video game involving space combat, would be sold separately from Star Citizen. >25. On February 14, 2016, Defendants moved forward with their plan for Squadron 42 notwithstanding their failure to obtain a license and began offering the video game for separate purchase. As a result, Defendants are intentionally and willfully using CryEngine without a license and in violation of copyright laws. This seems to be the main point. They're claiming Star Citizen is using CryEngine for their new game, and haven't licensed it out to do that, along with the company behind Star Citizen distributing assets of Cryengine in various ways. They were also supposed to help in developement of Cryengine in way of bug fixes, and did not comply. Crytek's GLA appears to be pretty far reaching. >38. On December 23, 2016, Defendants announced that they were using the Amazon Lumberyard video game engine for Star Citizen. The GLA did not permit Defendants to use any other video game engine in Star Citizen except for CryEngine. >50. On May 6, 2015, Defendants began posting a series of videos online titled "Bugsmashers." The videos contain excerpts of information from CryEngine that were confidential, in breach of the GLA, and should not have been shown to the public. The series continues today.

jchw 9y ago
What I'm confused about is this. I thought Star Citizen moved to Amazon Lumberyard, which I believe is a fork of CryEngine. What confidential information could they have that Lumberyard hasn't already put into the open?
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines.
  - jchw 9y ago
    Ah, that's interesting. I was referring to the claim that they revealed confidential information about Cry Engine, but that explains the meat of this lawsuit. I didn't read through the whole thing. I'm not a big follower of Star Citizen and frankly even with all of the evidence presented I'm not sure what the outcome should rightfully be, but it sounds to me like CIG is knee deep right now.

danielvf 9y ago

This suit seems a bit weak in places. For example they are sueing that they only licensed cryengine for one game, and yet RSI was planning on using it for two games. However the second game has never shipped, and RSI has switched both games over to the Amazon Lumberyard engine. This particular claim seems like it’s going to get thrown out. My guess is that we’ll see a settlement in this. It doesn’t seem like this going to hurt RSI very much.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
There's a reasonable point that from the time they started developing Squadron 42 to the time that they switched to Lumberyard, they were illegally using the engine. Additionally, it's been suggested that the "engine switch" was in name only/an attempt at evading the license fee. If in discovery, they can prove CryEngine is still in use, as opposed to actually being properly rebased on Lumberyard... There's a lot here, and Crytek has a lot of different claims. They only need one or two of the claims to stick for it to hurt.
- danielvf 9y ago
  If they weren’t using Lumberyard, that would be more exciting, but CryTech claims RSI is, and some of their other claims are based on RSI having switched. They can’t have it both ways.
  - dsl 9y ago
    Sure they can. They moved the bulk of the engine over to Lumberyard and publicly announced that, but under the hood are probably using the more mature CryEngine where Lumberyard is lacking. EDIT: It gets more confusing, Lumberyard is apparently a hard fork of CryEngine that Amazon paid for. My guess is they switched to Lumberyard for better licensing terms, but kept all the enhancements made to CryEngine post-fork.
    - didibus 9y ago
      Amazon also made enhancements to Lumberyard since though. Not sure why you'd call one more mature then the other. Do you have experience with both and can attest that Lumberyard now lacks behind the latest CryEngine?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

This is the first time I've seen something amid all the wolf-crying about CIG and Star Citizen that could actually kill it. Crytek has a lot of claims, very likely reasonable merit for them, and more importantly: Crytek is desperate and needs the money. They have no reason to settle or back down. As a "concierge-level" backer (I'm embarrassed about it too, don't worry), I have a lot of concerns Crytek may end up with some or all of my money. That being said, I've never assumed a "purchase" with CIG was more than a crowdfund, and if it dies, that's how things go sometimes. I'm not angry, I'm not panicking, and I'm not joining the "demand a refund from CIG" party that a few people like to obsess about.

leereeves 9y ago
If they're desperate and need the money, they have a strong motive to settle instead of fighting a long lawsuit they might lose or wait through years of appeals and stalling tactics.
TotallyHuman 9y ago
Star Citizen backers are completely insane. They've received $100's of millions USD amd for what? An alpha proof of concept.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  The "alpha proof of concept" enables a certain amount of sandbox playability that no other game can replicate. Even in short play sessions, I've had an insane amount of fun figuring out if I can do things that simply wouldn't work in other games, and plenty of others on YouTube have done crazier. (A personal favorite was someone boarding an NPC ship.) I can't speak for everyone else, but I backed an idea. I gave money to someone who wanted to assemble a game with an unprecedented amount of flexibility and realism. Whether or not that actually makes a "good game" in the end. I invested in something I want to see happen. If it does not happen, that will be unfortunate, and I will be sad. But given that what they are trying to do is borderline insane, it will not be totally shocking if they fail.

drawkbox 9y ago

Lumberyard is a fork by Amazon of CryEngine that they licensed in 2015 that Star Citizen switched to. If developers start with that engine they are ok but looks like there were deals with Crytek on games/content before that date. Legal challenges from a game engine is something that can scare away new projects in that engine. This wouldn't affect most developers as Star Citizen signed with CryEngine but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon. Crytek is one of those companies that has great game engine tech but got high-centered when Unreal and Unity went free in 2015. Crytek is from the age of game development where licensing per game could run up above 300k for licenses and/or percentages that were much higher than today (Today Unreal is free but 5% royalties of gross over 3k quarterly -- but previously was 300k for the license -- Unity free up to 100k revs and $35/$125 Pro with no royalties, previously it was $1500 a year minimum). Crytek has been in a reactionary mode since 2015 when they also had to significantly change their model due to Unity/Unreal competitive moves. Unreal at 5% royalties over 3k a quarter, Unity at free to 100k annually and $35/$125 Pro after that and even Crytek at $50/mo, all are very helpful for game development skills. Previously when engines were hundreds of thousands for a license it was hard to even gain skills beyond modding tools for engines and game companies had to shoulder all the training costs of even good game devs. Today, Unity/Unreal skills are much easier to find because of the low cost of entry. Ultimately the change to subscriptions and low cost (relatively) of the licenses allows a good market for developers investing in skills that will immediately translate at the game company they are working at, much easier to hit the ground running. Ultimately access to the engines is more valuable than the up-front costs of the past. Crytek is still dealing with that competitive pressure most likely.

make3 9y ago
(Just kidding here) Unity and Unreal could merge into a company called U2. I wonder though if the FTC would let this unreal unity of game engines happen though
- fazilakhtar 9y ago
  You gave me a much needed laugh. Thank you!

59nadir 9y ago

Crytek is a useless company that's been looking to make a quick buck by any means possible since they stopped making games for real. You only have to look at their recent development with 'Crycash' for yet another example. This is just another attempt at keeping cash flow positive, not by making games but by any other means possible. I wouldn't be surprised to see news in a few months or half a year saying Crytek are yet again not paying their employees.

Godel_unicode 9y ago
Do you not consider making game engines and licensing their use to be a legitimate business model?
- TylerE 9y ago
  Not especially? Look at how the pricing has come down on UE4 and Unity.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    It's still their product? I don't see how price has anything to do with legitimacy of license agreements
  - lacker 9y ago
    Well yes, but Unity is still a real company with a real business model, same as Crytek could be while only developing an engine.
aluhut 9y ago
> Crytek is a useless company that's been looking to make a quick buck by any means possible [...] This is just another attempt at keeping cash flow positive, not by making games but by any other means possible. Sounds very much like CIG. Maybe they should merge.

georgeecollins 9y ago

This does not seem to be the kind of suit where the outcome is likely to be devastating for Cloud Imperium. It could be expensive, but it seems like they should have the resources to settle.

huhtenberg 9y ago

This will now make a lot of gamedevs stop and pause when considering Crytek goods, so Crytek must be really desperate to resort to this sort of PR-hostile measures.

mtgx 9y ago
> so Crytek must be really desperate I think the last I heard of them they were almost into bankruptcy-mode, so yeah it does seem like they did this out of desperation. Still short-sighted, though.
- joshschreuder 9y ago
  They're doing what I can only assume is a cashgrab crypto IPO too. http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/crycash-announces-its-token-sale-and-partners-with-crytek-immediately-bringing-cryptocurrency-to-20171210-00033 http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/crycash-announces-its-to...
larkeith 9y ago
On the other hand, if Star Citizen is really using an unlicensed instance of CryEngine for Squadron 42, that's a significant breach of contract, and effectively piracy. It seems absurd to avoid Crytek for responding with legal measures.
- glenneroo 9y ago
  AFAIK they moved to the customized version of CryEngine (Amazon's Lumberyard) beginning of this year due to engine limits. They even hired some ex-CryEngine-devs to get things going but in the end they (supposedly) had no other choice but to switch. So theoretically they haven't been using CryEngine at all since an entire year.
  - larkeith 9y ago
    Amusingly, that's also part of the lawsuit - Crytek claim Star Citizen were contractually obligated to use CryEngine exclusively. It's somewhat irrelevant, as, if they used CryEngine at all for Squadron 42, even if only for development (especially if promotional footage/beta testing/etc was on CryEngine), that remains unacceptable.

bufferoverflow 9y ago

Well that's a nail in the coffin of Cryengine. Who would want to deal with lawsuits just for using a (kind of) free engine, when we have Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, StingRay, Source, Godot, Phyre, Blender?

flohofwoe 9y ago
You can scratch Stingray from the list unfortunately: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/stingray-end-of-sale-faq.html https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explor...
- jarsin 9y ago
  HAHA Autodesk strikes again. Google should buy them..a match made in heaven.
erikj 9y ago
Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.
- shak77 9y ago
  What are the numbers? Is Havok really mandatory? Wouldn't it be possible to replace Havok with Bullet or some other related system?
  - erikj 9y ago
    $25,000. Valve doesn't distribute Source without it, as far as I know. Replacing Havok would take a lot of effort which is better spent elsewhere.
    - Strom 9y ago
      Valve has been working on a physics engine called Rubikon since at least 2012. [1] Maybe it will be used to fully replace Havok in Source 2. -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTC0V0LWeGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTC0V0LWeGI [1] http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2014/Sergiy_Migdalskiy_Debugging_Techniques.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2014/Sergiy_Migdals... [1] http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Migdalskiy_Sergiy_Physics_Optimization_Strategies.pdf http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Migdalskiy_Ser...

jagermo 9y ago

I never understood why CR choose CryEngine. Yes, it can Single Player games make look beautiful, but when it comes to Multiplayer, it never really could compete with Unreal Engine. Just look how much work RSI has to do, to get the netcode working - and so far, they still are limited to 24 players. In addition, the requirements of the CryEngine have always been high, the FPS drops and a lot of other performance problems probably have to do a lot with that. I am not sure if the Unreal Engine would have allowed the detailed modeling of the ships, but to be honest, I can see no advantages of CryEngine compared to Unreal Engine. If you have any, please let me know, I've been racking my mind over this.

cma 9y ago
UE4 wasn't out when Star Citizen went into early pre-production. A lot of things changed in the licensing model betwen UE3 and UE4. If they wanted to hit their original launch window they probably would have had to have gone with UE3. And if they had still ended up slipping as bad as they now have they would be on something that was really outdated (though they probably would have announced a switch to UE4).
stonith 9y ago
IIUC they modified CryEngine to support a 64 bit coordinate system, and part of the reason this was possible was because they hired ex-Crytek devs to do it. Doing the same conversion in Unreal might not be feasible. I believe this is needed for the 'space scale' kind of stuff they're doing. So as far as why they chose CR, it might have been because they had access to devs that they didn't have in the case of UE3/UE4. As far as modelling goes it makes no difference - they're all made in 3dsmax/maya and then imported and both engines would be heavily optimised for that pipeline.
- katastic 9y ago
  I haven't used the CryEngine but often times if you think you "need" a higher bit coordinate system (don't you mean 128-bit? ala long double? Doubles are already 64-bits and 80-bits internally.) you may be thinking of the problem in the wrong way. There's no reason you can't (in most games) have a segregated coordinate system. For example, where each star is the center, the (0,0,0) point. And when you warp from one star system to another, the new star is the new (0,0,0) point. Floats are great for huge distances, and tiny distances. They are horrific at BOTH at the same time... like say... adding a tiny fractional velocity vector per frame to an object millions or billions of units away. (There is a minimum amount you can add to a float without rounding down to the same original number, and the minimum change gets bigger the bigger the number is.) http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-programmer-should.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/09/what-every-computer-prog... IIRC, KSP does the same thing and coordinates are to the nearest "planet of influence"--which has the affect of removing Lagrangian points for orbits but otherwise works great without needing custom math types which are much much slower than native types, and it doesn't require ripping out all of the assumptions that an entire engine (Unity in the case of KSP) runs on. When I created my own 2-D KSP, I ended up encountering all of these issues first-hand, and simply adding more precision didn't help nearly as much as segregating my coordinate system when we're talking about "astronomical" scales. So if they're actually using non-native types, or having to change the engine, then they better have damn good reasons to do it. You don't change something that fundamental unless you're insanely brash, or, you've got a very-carefully-thought-out hard requirement that cannot be worked around. If they really "need" space ships to have huge precision at any point in the universe regardless of proximity to a star, I would rather create "false/invisble stars" (almost like a quadtree/octree tree) where ever they are needed. Like when a huge fleet is moving around in free space, it would have a coordinate system following the capital ship. And if two groups of capital ships are attacking, you merge the coordinate systems.

kristofferR 9y ago

Tldr: Crytek allows Amazon to create a cheap fork of CryEngine, then sues CryEngine users that switch to it.

usrusr 9y ago
The strongest claim is that the original agreement was positioning SC as a showcase ad vehicle for cryengine, but, with CIG moving to the lumberyard fork, this is clearly not happening. Basically SC was married to cryengine until death do us apart, but now crytek is lying sick in deathbed and CIG have run off with their sister (because, despite all metaphors, CIG are still a company, not a spouse) instead of sitting at their bedside, holding hands as long as it takes.
rootlocus 9y ago
This is false. They sued one user who had a contract not to switch to other engines. > 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines. If you don't want to get sued, don't sign contracts and breach them.
lazyman75 9y ago
"Allows"? "Cheap"? AFAIK Amazon paid 75 millions for that ...
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
No. Here's a better tldr. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919833

bdemarchi 9y ago

Star Citizen is an amazing idea. That idea was funded by millions, including me. The people managing it should have never put our money on the line by not respecting whatever agreement they signed in the past. Review the agreements if necessary, but do not disregard them and put everyone hopes in the mud. Star Citizen community is not expecting to pay millions to settle that lawsuit if that was avoidable, and yes, the community gave that money, better thread carefull here. Reading the complains it seems CIG has just completely neglected the agreement. There might be a lawfull explanation to all of that, but if their description of the event is precise, the people managing the Star Citizen idea are at fault for not doing their best to protect it and should be questioned by the community. Have a nice day.

wavefunction 9y ago
I am a backer of Star Citizen but I am not sure that Crytek's claims should be taken completely at face-value. For instance, Crytek claims that Squadron 42 was announced to be offered as a stand-alone game in 2016 but I remember this being the public stance of CIG far before that. It sounds like Crytek failed to secure a comprehensive agreement covering the situation as it has developed over the years and is now attempting to make up for that lapse. And I imagine it's driven by the desperation that Crytek must feel being so close to insolvency. From what I remember they were also pretty peeved that CIG picked up some of their senior CryEngine engineers when Crytek was missing payroll.

puppetmaster40 9y ago

It appears similar to Google vs Oracle, where google won saying Android is not Java so no need to license. I consider Oracle lawyers poor - for example I can take an Apache Java jar and run it on Android.

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