Is Crytek really going broke?

[CAaronD]

I heard half of the UK staff has quit, and now a 'bulk' of the US staff are quitting too. Do you think they'll finish the Homefront game? I would really love to see that Apparently they have sold the Homefront series now? What will happen to them? I would hate to see Crytek going broke, I really loved the Crysis series I would really hate to see them go before they make Cryengine 4

 

[CAaronD]

Crysis has always been the standard for top end hardware, always using Crysis for testing There's always that amazing feeling when you've built a PC and you realize it can run Crysis smoothly, that happened for all of the Crysis Especially the 2007 Crysis was a hardware KILLER. First Crytek game I ever got was a pre-ordered Crysis 1 in 2007.

If you get what I mean, there's always an amazing feeling of being able to run Crysis on ultra.

 

[Gam3r01]

Though the feeling is amazing, it dosent pay the bills.
There is an article in the gaming section of news that lays it out fairly well.

Part of the article states many parts of the team have gone months without pay.

 

[Pinhedd]

I'm not surprised.

Internal estimates for Crysis put the piracy rate as high as 20:1 (20 pirated installations for every retail installation)

Crysis 2 is hailed by some as the most pirated game of 2011

Crysis 3 was more bolted down and has some fun disruptive DRM but was still pirated incessantly

 

[Gam3r01]

The piracy rate what THAT high?
I was aware it was often, but nowhere near 20:1. I would think a 1:1 was high.

 

[Pinhedd]

The piracy rate what THAT high?
I was aware it was often, but nowhere near 20:1. I would think a 1:1 was high.

It was incredibly high for Crysis 1. 20:1 was the highest of the internal estimates. It's based on a lot of gathered data such as patch downloads and stuff like that.
Part of it is somewhat understandable given that many users were completely unsure as to whether or not they could even play the game much less play it well. Crytek kinda dropped the ball with the system requirements, Vista/DX10 confusion, and general confusion about releasing a game in 2007 that required a top end computer from 2008 to play at full settings. Even with all of that considered they still estimated that an enormous number of people played the game through to completion without paying for it at all.

Lower estimates for Crysis 2 put the piracy numbers at 4 million on the low end on the PC alone, which is more than the game sold on the consoles entirely

 

[Gam3r01]

Thats rough, I have only played the games for a few minutes each, never had anything good enough to run them until now, and never bought them on console, but they seemed like fun games that I wouldnt mind paying retail (or steams 40 dollar) retail for. (If steam had it)

 

[Pinhedd]

Thats rough, I have only played the games for a few minutes each, never had anything good enough to run them until now, and never bought them on console, but they seemed like fun games that I wouldnt mind paying retail (or steams 40 dollar) retail for. (If steam had it)

Steam has all of them except for Crysis 3 which is Origin only (it's used as a DRM platform to constrain piracy, which had limited success)

 

[Gam3r01]

I might pick those up the next time I have some money in my bank account, which is rare for me as a high school senior.

 

[CAaronD]

Well, I'm sure I'm the only one in my country (brunei) Who bought it ... xD What about Homefront Revolution? What will become of it?

 

[Pinhedd]

Well, I'm sure I'm the only one in my country (brunei) Who bought it ... xD What about Homefront Revolution? What will become of it?

Crytek is a mature studio with very capable staff. Absent any internal dysfunction (which I have no reason to believe exists) I'd expect someone to finance their endeavours provided that they can produce a business plan to produce a profit. That should be pretty easy with two brand new consoles out now. They may drop a few projects though, but only time will tell.

Financial troubles and bankruptcy don't always mean the end of the world for a company or its products.

 

[cats_Paw]

Piracy wasent the real problem.
Crysis one was pirated but nowhere near as much as in 20 to 1 ratio. If that was true, no gaming company would exist because everyone of them would cash in and leave b4 piracy destroyed them too.

Estimates where somewhat in 9 million sales, 4.5 million pirated (Here is they key element: from those 4.5 million, many actually bought the game afterwards).
In crysis 2 and 3 sales dropped because it was not a game that people wanted to pay for, plain and simple.

I dont want to get into a debate of crysis 1 vs 2 or 3, but the sale numbers tell the story.

I never even tried crysis 2 and 3, but I do have 3 copies of the original crysis (one in english one in spanish and one in steam).

Personally, I wont cry over crytek. After farcry one and crysis one their games were of no interest to me, and perhaps the workers who left can make a better game without having to answer to the burocracy of big companies.

Also note that you have to take into account the production costs.

I dont know the numbers but im quite sure crysis 2 and 3 costed a lot more (due to advertising mostly) than crysis 1.

Hell, it seems that the higher the budget, the shittier the game... (in some cases at least).

Actually i remember a documentary that proved some time ago that piracy boosts sales of good products and kills bad ones.
The theory behind it was that people who are not going to buy the game in the first place will be able to experience it, and spread the word among those who can buy it. Not everyone likes to have pirated stuff on their PC, for many many reasons.
Those who would buy the game can play it before and then decide if they want to spend their money on it. (at some point it was quite normal, they used to call it a demo).

Of course nothing stops people then from having a pirated game and never buying it, but the biggest problem has always been DRM. Especially the one that crashes the game and makes it unplayable for 1 week after release. Hackers will always find a way around DRM, and their version rarely has crashes, and when it does, those people actually help you solve it.....

Ofc you can get a virus on your PC or similar, but generally, its hard to hate piracy when they are the ones trying to help you run the game, while companies seem to only take your money.

Crysis one for example had a quite simple protection, and it was pirated less than the sequels. The law is also changeing rapidly to ban piracy, wich is a good thing, but im sure that studios making free to play games will destroy big AAA companies when that happens, as it is already starting to happen.

 

[CAaronD]

I think the best thing any company could do, is put their game on Steam. I have regretted buying tons of crappy games on steam just for the sake of it being on Steam when I could have easily pirated. And they seem to have partnered with EA and put their things Origin exclusive only ... That could be a major factor of their financial problem too?

 

[cats_Paw]

I dont really think so.
The budgets for some games are flat out insane. An example would be Destiny. It costed 500 million.... and to tell you the truth it doesent look anywhere special to me (based on youtube videos).
What exactly did they spend 500 million on?

Think of the 10 most revolutionary games out there, in terms of graphics, gameplay, storyline, multiplayer... Any of those had a huge budget? Personally I cant think of any that had it.

Games I think about are fallout 3, Amnesia, Witcher 2, Dead Space 1, Dark Souls 1, Need for speed porsche 2000, Unreal Tournament, Crysis 1....

I dont know who is they financial consultant for the gaming companies, but they are not doing a great job....

Also note that Even if a Game like Destiny makes 1.000 million, they have to pay taxes, pay the workers, the board of directors, the CEO, the shareholders....
and now substract the 500 million that the game costed... Yes, unless you relese a new game very very soon, that 500 million income vanishes in a blink of an eye (In game development terms).

 

[Rationale]

It's really not surprising if Crytek is struggling. They've tried to fill an unstable niche for too long. Yes, you can sell copies to the uber-l33t PC gamerz crowd, but not enough to pay the bills. Most gaming PCs are running the equivalent of a GTX 650 Ti or HD 7770 right now, and it's always the $100-$150 range of video cards that sell the most. The 99% of people who create sales just care about optimization; what kind of ratio can be achieved between visuals and performance. Very few people in the real world really care how nice a game can look on a GTX 780 Ti, regardless of the impression you might get from enthusiast sites like this one.

Plus, what the hell are AAA developers doing with their budgets? 500 million is insane. I've seen games from small teams on budgets of $5000 or less hit 90% of AAA quality, with actually more original or more intuitive gameplay, and better storytelling methods.

Games with ultra-high fidelity graphics take the most money to develop and return the lowest profits from the lowest number of consumers, just so a tiny subset of gamers can grow their e-peen and feel unusually close to their hardware. How did Crytek's management imagine it could possibly end well for them? There's no way.

There's a reason the most popular PC games in the world will run maxed and look nice on an HD 7770.

 

[gamerk316]

Plus, what the hell are AAA developers doing with their budgets? 500 million is insane. I've seen games from small teams on budgets of $5000 or less hit 90% of AAA quality, with actually more original or more intuitive gameplay, and better storytelling methods.

This. And EA/Activision are the only ones who can survive a bomb due to costs these days, which is why all the AA studios are getting gobbled up. 2k is likely to be sold to Activision in the very near future, so there will be no major AA studios left once that occurs, since Crytek is moving full speed toward F2P gaming, and is a financial mess.