It’s never easy to report on a gaming studio closing. Making it worse is when it happens this time of the year when mankind should be celebrating and giving thanks and being merry. Sadly, Crytek has stated they will be closing their studios in Hungary, Bulgaria, South Korea, China, and Turkey. That’s a lot of people who be without a job very soon.
This comes after the recent news of employees of the company stating they either didn’t get paid or were missing payments months on end. This, of course, isn’t the first time this has been cited either as this has been going on since June 2014. This leaves Crytek with just two studios worldwide, with one in Frankfurt, Germany and the other in Kiev, Ukraine.
Crytek’s co-founder, Avni Yerli, addressed the closures and stated that they were changes that needed to be made in order to ensure that the company would continue to exist. A change in their business direction explains the closures, which is something that happens a lot in the gaming industry.
“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 — Avni Yerli”
Crytek is most notable for their Crysis games, Ryse and the recently release of Robinson: The Journey for the PlayStation VR. The company also developed the ill-fated Homefront: The Revolution and later transferred the IP and the team responsible over to Koch Media.In addition, the company has been licensing their Crytek engine (CryEngine) for game development. Since then, other game engines have also become increasingly popular and started to rival or in some cases, surpass the CryEngine game engine.
Here’s to hoping that whoever is displaced will find new employment sooner than later.
