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

https://www.scribd.com/document/367101474/Crytek-v-CIG

by doppp • 9 years ago

129 115 9 years ago

bobsgame• 9 years 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.

throwaway133372• 9 years 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...

They're more of a struggling company. But hey, at least they deliver a product.

JohnStrange• 9 years 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.

devwastaken2• 9 years 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• 9 years 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

synicalx2• 9 years 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!

throwaway133372• 9 years ago

Interesting to note that Lumberyard is a licensed Cryengine fork.

m_mueller2• 9 years 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?

lyrrad• 9 years ago

I assume the 'in excess of $75,000' figure is in there to ensure that a Federal court has jurisdiction over the action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amount_in_controversy

synicalx2• 9 years ago

Ah that would make sense! Theoretically then, I suppose this could actually be quite a big chunk of cash in question - especially with all the allusions to how much money CIG raised for Star Citizen.

devwastaken2• 9 years 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.

jchw2• 9 years 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?

rootlocus7• 9 years 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.

Gupie• 9 years ago

Defendants are intentionally and willfully using CryEngine without a license and in violation of copyright laws.

This is from the banner at the top of CryEngine's home page:

"Full engine source code. All features. No royalties. No obligations. No license fee.

Narretz• 9 years ago

It's possible that CryEngine is now offerend under different terms compared to when it was licensed to StarCitizen.

Rooster61• 9 years ago

A banner on a website is hardly legally binding. All that becomes moot when a contract is signed saying what each parties' responsibilities are and the dotted lines are signed.

IncRnd2• 9 years ago

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.

JepZ• 9 years ago

To set it in perspective here is the part about the violated Agreement:

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.
Defendants utterly failed to follow through on those promises, and their actions and omissions constitute breaches of contract and copyright infringement and have caused substantial harm to Crytek.

danielvf2• 9 years 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.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years 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.

danielvf2• 9 years 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.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years 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• 9 years 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.

_zl9i• 9 years ago

Star Citizen backers are completely insane. They've received $100's of millions USD amd for what? An alpha proof of concept.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

You gave me a much needed laugh. Thank you!

katastic4• 9 years ago

Now there's a man that's thinking with his Id.

ekianjo2• 9 years ago

merge into a company called U2

You are waiting for another Copyright suit, aren't you? :)

wccrawford2• 9 years ago

but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon.

Seriously. I can't imagine anyone seeing this lawsuit and reading about the terms of these contracts and thinking, "Yeah, CryEngine sounds like a good idea."

Lumberyard is far more likely to have good licensing terms, plus Amazon integration, and Unreal Engine is a serious competitor with very clear licensing terms and pretty extreme access to the engine code itself.

IMO, Crytek should take a deal as soon as its offered, here.

shak773• 9 years ago

What's "Amazon integration"?

And why is Amazon developing a game engine?

theandrewbailey• 9 years ago

Crytek should take a deal as soon as its offered, here.

Back when Lumberyard was announced, I wondered if Amazon would buy out Crytek. Figuring it's payroll issues, I thought it would be a bargain if Amazon really wanted to seriously get into game development. Since it's been two years, I don't think that it will happen. Now I'm thinking that Amazon will buy the scraps during liquidation.

59nadir• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

Do you not consider making game engines and licensing their use to be a legitimate business model?

TylerE• 9 years ago

Not especially?

Look at how the pricing has come down on UE4 and Unity.

aluhut• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

They're doing what I can only assume is a cashgrab crypto IPO too.

http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/crycash-announces-its-to...

larkeith2• 9 years 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• 9 years 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.

rootlocus7• 9 years ago

How is that? Crytek aren't suing without reason. According to the complaint they lost money and tech from a breach of contract. It's a perfectly reasonable reason to sue.

PhasmaFelis3• 9 years ago

A lot of gamers (and by extension devs) assume the worst of any legal action, so it's bad PR even if they're completely justified.

IncRnd2• 9 years ago

They are likely to be somewhat desperate.

Consider this, though, if the only protection of one's income came from a license - it makes sense to enforce that license against people who didn't pay substantially over $75,000, after contacting them several times.

bufferoverflow• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

You can scratch Stingray from the list unfortunately:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explor...

jarsin• 9 years ago

HAHA Autodesk strikes again. Google should buy them..a match made in heaven.

erikj4• 9 years ago

Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.

shak773• 9 years ago

What are the numbers?

Is Havok really mandatory? Wouldn't it be possible to replace Havok with Bullet or some other related system?

frik2• 9 years ago

Does Source ship nowadays with a recent Havok physics library nowadays?

I heard they used to use an decade old physics library that just got bought by Havok company in the meantime and has nothing to do with the Havok physic engines everyone knows.

rootlocus7• 9 years ago

They're not dealing with a lawsuit because they're using a free engine. They had a very specific contract with Crytek which they breached multiple times.

jagermo• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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.

katastic4• 9 years 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-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.

vita17• 9 years ago

This website is awfully damning considering the game was supposed to be released over a year ago:

https://starcitizentracker.github.io/

As you can see, development has stalled and very little progress is being made.

To answer your question: they chose a game engine to create shiny demos and carefully crafted videos. They have no intention of releasing a fully playable game. They just need to keep the hype going to keep selling virtual spaceships and virtual land.

INTPenis• 9 years ago

I just have to mention that it is playable and I know at least one friend who is having fun playing it.

I never tried it.

jochung2• 9 years ago

People seem eager to forget Chris Roberts pitched this exact game before, as Freelancer, and that was released years too late, with none of the promised "living universe" features, after being bought out and handed off to someone else.

Fool me once...

I've heard people say "the technology didn't exist back then!", which is true. But the technology doesn't exist today either. Games have gotten a lot better at drawing convincing pictures, but in terms of simulating worlds and generating content, we've mostly stood still.

No Man's Sky already showed that, with its demo scene derived trickery. You can't entertain people with random seeds for very long. You need intent, storytelling and reactive, interacting systems.

zionic2• 9 years ago

That website is pretty terrible, contains duplicates and many questionable items

kristofferR• 9 years ago

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

usrusr• 9 years 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.

rootlocus7• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

"Allows"? "Cheap"? AFAIK Amazon paid 75 millions for that ...

PhasmaFelis3• 9 years ago

No. Here's a better tldr. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919833

bdemarchi• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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.

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

Related Stories