Cloud Imperium Games Getting Sued

Makers of scam citizen getting sued by crytek for unlicensed use of cryengine and breach of contract.

massivelyop.com/2017/12/13/crytek-sues-star-citizen-developer-cloud-imperium-alleging-copyright-infringement/

>Crytek is suing Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries, the companies behind the sprawling and controversial crowdfunded MMO Star Citizen.

>In documents filed with the California Central District Court yesterday, Crytek alleges that CIG infringed its copyrights by using CryEngine to develop non-Star Citizen game assets – specifically, Squadron 42.

>“Crytek has not been compensated for Defendants’ unlicensed use of Crytek technology in the Squadron 42 game, and has been substantially harmed by being deprived of that compensation, which would ordinarily include a substantial up-front payment as well as a substantial royalty on game sales,” plaintiffs argue.

>Furthermore, Crytek accuses CIG of deleting Crytek logos in marketing materials and splash screens around the same time studio head Chris Roberts began calling the game’s engine Star Engine rather than CryEngine, which itself was allegedly a breach of the original licensing agreement.

>Crytek has demanded “all direct damages (estimated to be in excess of $75,000), indirect damages, consequential damages (including lost profits), special damages, costs, fees, and expenses incurred by reason of Defendants’ breach of contract and copyright infringement” as well as a cut of the profit, punitive damages, and a permanent injunction against CIG’s use of CryEngine.

I sure am glad I wasn't dumb enough to donate to this shit.

Other urls found in this thread:

eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-01-layoffs-at-crytek
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_jurisdiction
cryengine.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

will they have a new fundraising campaign for the legal bills?

So they're suing because SC was split into two games and they weren't paid for the second?

tfw you backed star citizen

That and CIG supposedly deleted crytek logos in marketing materials, which was something their contract said they weren't allowed to do.

Squadron 42 is the single player portion of star citizen which is the same game no? I think Crytek has a case for the logo deletion and promoting the engine as "star engine" parts but saying that the single player is a different game is a little naive.

well that's part of it, keep reading you lazy ass

As much as I love seeing Star Citizen get BTFO, 75,000 is a pittance compared to their 200 million. Even if we're super liberal and assume that everything beyond "direct damage" adds up to like a million its still a drop in the ocean.

Well so far that's just an accusation. I haven't been following SC since the start but I have been following for a while now and I've never heard anyone say "Star Engine".

>2 shitty cancerous companies who are falling apart trying to choke each other over scam money
Fucking gold. Scamstarter idiots will never learn.

Didn't they switch to lumberyard?

I'm pretty sure it was slated to be a separate release back before it got delayed into oblivion

1) that was only part of the fees, with like 8 more parts
2) they're also demanding they stop using the engine

Lumberyard is still the CryEngine.

I thought Squadron 45 was part of SC, like playing a single player campaign or a multiplayer game

Lumberyard is practically cryengine, they were still under contract and fucked up.

How is it still the CryEngine?
Isnt Lumberyard made by amazon?

haha how will chris blobberts wiggle his way out of this one?

Its the same game (same assets), they dont have a case here.

Sounds like a frivolous lawsuit, Crytek is just trying to double dip on that sweet whale money.

>Crytek has demanded “all direct damages (estimated to be in excess of $75,000), indirect damages, consequential damages (including lost profits), special damages, costs, fees, and expenses incurred by reason of Defendants’ breach of contract and copyright infringement” as well as a cut of the profit, punitive damages, and a permanent injunction against CIG’s use of CryEngine.
Oh my fucking god, if this actually ended up killing SC I would die of laughter. I need to see SCdrones reacting to this.

Technically they aren't actually connected. You buy them separately, which is pretty Jewish. But in terms of development, it basically is just the singleplayer portion of their game. So it depends on if you view this from the perspective of the consumer or the developer.

>using CryEngine to develop non-Star Citizen game assets – specifically, Squadron 42.
It'll be settled out of court, but if it went to court CIG would win easily.

Star Citizen and Sq42 are the same game. Squadron 42 is the singleplayer campaign and was always part of the project. It cannot even be purchased separately - difficult then to argue it's a separate game, right? What fucking "royalties" does Crytek think it's going to collect?

This lawsuit is a joke.

It's a CryEngine fork.

If anything it would cause whales to dump another hundred mil into it to save the game.

You can purchase Squadron 42 separately.

Isn't squadron 42 the campaign for Star Citizen?

This makes no sense.

I see, if they are sold separately then they are totally two different games. I thought they were sold together

...

That's only one of the problems, though. and SQ42 is technically related to SC, but it isn't actually SC. CiG wasn't really allowed to use CryEngine to make SC. There's also the fact that CiG used the CryEngine to make their game but didn't properly compensate or even acknowledge Crytek. They removes all mentions of Crytek from the games promotional footage (basically they used the engine that crytek made but removed all crytek logos and whatnot).

>Anything ever posted about this game is only posted of it's negative
Here you go, Derek.
>We did an outright buyout of the engine last year and have the source code, so while we hope all the noise about Crytek blows over, as they are great partners and friends to the project, if the worse happened we would be ok, as we’ve already branched the engine and have a large team that is adding features and supporting it every day here at CIG. So even in the worst case scenario we should be fine, but obviously we hope it does not come to that.

>Cheers,

>Erin

Oh.

Well that's retarded.

Slam dunk win for Crytek.

This will be settled out of court for sure, but Crytek is doing it because they're able to hold CIG to ransom. Without Cryengine CIG doesn't have a game and CIG knows it, and Crytek knows CIG knows it and is basically just sticking their hand out and saying "pay us or ded".

>399983873
Read the last part. If Crytek won this in a court case, CiG wouldn't be allowed to use the CryEngine anymore. They would either dump the project or start over from scratch.

>With Cryengine
They're using Lumberyard.

Squadron 42 is a separate project. That's the problem.

They could argue that the version they're using is so heavily modified it's barely the same engine. Plus I doubt they'll lose.

Starting over from scratch is CIG's specialty.

Crytek is doing poorly?

Absolutely.
eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-01-layoffs-at-crytek

Crytek has lost many of their engineers to CIG, and apparently hasn't been paying their employees, Crytek has been hemorrhaging money, and now they're trying to stay afloat by selling their engine to other companies (amazon and lumberyard, which is what CIG using now) and trying to shit out early access games. Oh and I guess suing companies that paid for their engine.

Very poorly. They've closed multiple studios now and on numerous occasions have been late with paying their employees. That's the type of shit that happens right before a company goes under.

>crytek on its last legs sues money pit
cool

Lumberyard IS the CryEngine you dumb ass.

Lumberyard is cryengine owned by Amazon. Crytek has zero say over lumberyard.

but it's a fork licensed to Amazon

>Crytek has lost many of their engineers to CIG
wat

>guess suing companies that paid for their engine.
Read the lawsuit, Scam Citizen is definitely in the wrong here

check out this tidbit from the complaint:

> In 2012, Defendants sought to develop a new game called "Star Citizen," which was billed as an epic space adventure, trading, and dogfighting video game. To make that game a reality, Defendants sought to use the CryEngine video game development platform as its foundation. Crytek and Defendants agreed to preliminary license terms, and Crytek invested significant time and expense in creating impressive demonstrations and proofs-of-concept that were used to persuade the public to contribute financially to a "crowdfunding" campaign to support development of the video game. As a direct result of Crytek's efforts, the crowdfunding campaign for Star Citizen was a monumental success, raising over 150 million dollars — a record for video game crowdfunding projects.

I didn't know that Crytek developed all the stuff he used to launch his scam. Sounds like they didn't anticipate it being used that way. This must be the stuff that he said had been in development for 6 months to a year before the launch of the kick starter begging.

From a business perspective it's a separate product. I don't think it's going to hold up in court that Lumberyard is CryEngine and so the CryEngine contract still holds.

>Crytek gets out of perpetual bankruptcy by suing the Star Citizen devs into oblivion
That would be hilarious.

CIG pays their employees, Crytek doesn't. It's not particularly surprising that a studio is hiring developers experienced with the engine they are using.

[cries in 5+ year wait]

Crytek grew too big too fast and had to shut down a bunch of studios or go bankrupt. They couldn't pay their employees so CIG swooped in and hired them.

CIG literally bought an office right next to Crytek Frankfurt and hired everyone who worked there.

>license engine
>don't want to follow license terms anymore
>"switch" to amazon fork of the engine
lol gonna get silicon knighted

Here we go boys

You forgot
>launching its own cryptocurrency crycash

Crytek was literally not paying their employees. Either they were laid off or quit or fired and were picked up by CIG, who actually pays them.
see

That comment was posted back in 2014, so this was before (about a year) before CIG started doing the infringements that Crytek is now complaining about. Even an engine buyout would have some limitation on the use of said engine. To list an example, the excluvisity of CryEngine for Star Citizen as well as the oblication for the CryEngine Logo to show up in trade marks to list a couple. Even though CIG bought the code, what really depends is how they followed the terms of agreement with Crytek and what CIG were really allowed to use the engine for. This is what Crytek is questioning now

Taken from the comments section in the OP.

>Let's build our own engine guys, how hard can it be

...

>All of this thanks to PC pirates.
Hard to believe frankly.

cryengine itself is such a bad engine for making a seamless space MMO

it has things like a water plane at -1000Y hardcoded into the physics engine

they really should've used something like UE4 instead

The literal face of autism, Derek Smart is never right. Stop defending that scum.

>lol gonna get silicon knighted

Not quite the same situation. Silicon Knights stupidly sued Epic which exposed all their bullshit for a counter suit. This seems to be Crytek getting pissy that CIG switched to license from one of the sub-licensees rather than Crytek directly. I guess you could say it's a dick move from CIG but the guys running Crytek are absolute scumbags themselves and the sooner their company goes out of business the better.

Are you Hideo or Kojima?

How is it PC people's fault? Crytek abandoned PC after Crysis Warhead. It's not PC's responsibility to subsidize console games. Where were the console players (the audience for Crysis 2 and 3) in all this?

there isn't really a publicly available modern engine that could accomodate what they planned out of the box

Lol. Where did the shill go?

>Crytek actually provided all the early materials for Scat Shitizen.
>Everything Cloud Emperium has produced is broken fucked-up mess.
>They just keep selling 15k ship packages and property.
>No end in sight after 5 years.
>200m down the shitter on revolving doors and expresso machines.
>Crytek can't even afford a bag of peanuts.
this shit is gold.

...

The only game I can think of that comes close is Shores of Hazeron, and that has super shitty graphics.

No, but at least other engines are made to be more adaptable.

Cryengine is pretty much made to only do one thing well -- first person FPS games on flat terrain with limited level sizes

So Robert after scamming supporters decided that wasn't enough and tried scamming CryTek?

>How is it PC people's fault? Crytek abandoned PC after Crysis Warhead.

They abandoned PC because of the rampant piracy on the platform. I don't know why Sup Forums continues to deny the enormous piracy rates on the PC platform. Even that EU study that supposedly proved that piracy doesn't harm sales was still indicating a piracy rate of around 70% for the platform, far higher than what the consoles have. I don't really think it's that unreasonable for companies to be pissed that only 3 out of 10 people who play your product actually paid for it.

Crytek really only does farcry style games well

Here's the actual facts about this:

Crytek (what's left of that dead company since most of the company actually went to CIG) is suing because of mainly two (2) things.

ONE, they're upset that the " game license license" (the term I will use even though it's not actually a game license for reasons I will explain later) covered both SQ42 and Star Citizen. The single player game and the multiplayer universe game. They wanted them to get two licenses, they're upset that SQ42 and SC is two games instead of one.

TWO, they're mostly upset because the Crytek logo and name have been removed from the game.

Now you might wonder, well why would they remove the logo to the engine they use? Well first of all, CIG doesn't even use cryengine anymore. They use Amazon's Lumberyard which is based on cryengine.

Then you might say "well they still can't use someone elses product and not credit them.
Here's the kicker though: In 2013, CIG just like Amazon did BOUGHT THE FUCKING LICENSE FOR THE ENGINE. THEY OWN IT. THEY OWN THE GOD DAMN SOURCE CODE FOR CRYENGINE AND CAN DO WHAT EVER THE FUCK THEY WANT WITH IT.

This is a last fucking breath of a dying company trying to get some money to save face. But Crytek is dead, CIG own their engine and they own most of their developers already as well. CIG is fully ready for this suit and Crytek will end up paying out even more money in court fees.

They were doing better on PC than they ever did on consoles you retard

Lol.
>Mfw Sam Hyde did the same
>Mfw when did not bought anything from the scammers

I don't think they really purposely tried to scam Crytek. They were just careless.

Crysis was pirated a lot but it also still sold well. And again, where were console players during all of this? How come Crysis 2 didn't sell gangbusters and get Crytek rolling in money? Crytek has made plenty of games after Crysis 1/Warhead but they're still on the verge of bankruptcy all the time. Their next game is also PC exclusive for some reason.

lol who the fuck plays fps games on console

a platform could have a piracy rate of 99.999% and if it didn't impact sales it wouldn't matter to the viability of your business

It's sold separately though and doesn't use the star citizen name.

It's already been proven that amongst pirates are also the biggest whales. There have been so many financially successful games (most of them in fact) that got pirated to hell and back released year after year. Conversely DRM hasn't correlated to a strong increase in sales. The statistics don't lie.

The idea that a game tanks simply because of pirating has empirically been proven bullshit.

Crytek abandoned them after Crysis 1 when the director vowed never to make a PC exclusive again after Crysis 1 was pirated multiple times over the sales, which killed the series in a single swoop, and when they finally returned, it was with the abortion that was Warhead.
Cevat Yerli has said his disdain for pirates on multiple occasions. This is why nobody makes single-player content on PC worth a fuck unless it's multiplat.

>Even that EU study that supposedly proved that piracy doesn't harm sales was still indicating a piracy rate of around 70% for the platform.

No it wasn't, you can quit lying now.

>facts
Half truths, lies and twisted half lies half shilling.

May you get ass cancer and die in your own shit, tool.

>sold seperarely
It will 60 dollars total just loke any game, 45 for sw42 and 15 for mp add on. Both running from the same client.

strong applause for this man

They are estimated to be in excess of $75,000. They're not saying the damages are only $75,000. This is a legal requirement to sue in federal court under diversity jurisdiction, that's the only reason that's mentioned

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_jurisdiction

The problem is Crysis wasn't a failure. It was certainly pirated a lot but that didn't detract from it selling well. And they made 2 high budget games after that that were tailored to consoles so where were all the console players giving them money? You can't blame Crysis' piracy for the company failing when Crysis 2 and 3 exist and amazingly didn't sell well on consoles.

Derek now you're just being sad.

>CryTek is so desperate for money, they're doing everything they can to get some back

This just days after announcing their "Cryptocurrency in game" for WarFace.

How far they've fallen

Pretty funny, really. But why even sue if CIG obviously owns it? Makes no sense unless there's a loophole about them having a cryengine logo on a loading screen in the game.

The best part is CIG basically saved a shit ton of Cry employees from being unemployed (not that they were getting paid anyway) and with 3.0 around the corner Crytek wants to bight the hand that feeds. Shame really.

jokes on Crytek, the CryEngine is completely free anyways.
cryengine.com/
>NO ROYALTIES. NO OBLIGATIONS.
>The most powerful game development platform is now available to everyone. Full engine source code. All features. No royalties. No obligations. No license fee.

Oh fuck off. The notion that every single person that pirated a game and didn't subsequently purchase it never would have purchased it in the first place is utter bullshit. Piracy DOES impact sales, the only argument is to what degree. Crytek, along with many other former PC developers like Monolith, id, Bethesda, Epic, etc., etc., were of the opinion it was far too large an impact to ignore. Even CDPR, Sup Forums's favorite developer, became a multiplat developer because of piracy on the PC platform and has also said consoles are easily the majority of their sales and without them games like The Witcher 3 would never exist.

See

>But why even sue if CIG obviously owns it? Makes no sense unless there's a loophole about them having a cryengine logo on a loading screen in the game.

Not saying this is the case but a lot of lawsuits are made under the hope that the defendant will decide it's cheaper to settle than fight in court.

It worked for CDPR. It didn't work for Crytek since their three (?) console games also sold like shit and they're so desperate they're trying to sue an actually successful (regardless of how scummy that success is) company. Crytek attempted to sell out regardless of the reason and it ended up making everything worse.

Also you're actually kind of wrong. TW3 did sell well on PC. It's about 1/3 between the three platforms give or take some sales, with the PS4 probably coming out on top. The PC version isn't really that far behind the PS4 sales.

In the user agreement it still says that you have to at least credit CryEngine as the source. Otherwise you'd have to pay royalties.