
Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract - doppp
https://www.scribd.com/document/367101474/Crytek-v-CIG
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devwastaken
>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.

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

~~~
bonesss
It's also possible that the Engine is, and was, offered under multiple terms
simultaneously to hit different parts of the market.

I'm speculating (yay internet!), but for Enterprise components developers
profit from there's often a "buy the cow up front" option along with a "free
cow today for a sip of the milk tomorrow" model.

Star Citizen, particularly before the crowd funding, wouldn't have wanted to
give them a lot of cash up front, and got some really nice concessions in the
deal (free promos and development).

~~~
king_phil
What does it matter? Pacta sunt servanda...?

------
drawkbox
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
(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

~~~
ekianjo
> merge into a company called U2

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

~~~
wtetzner
Wouldn't that be a trademark issue?

~~~
ekianjo
Yes, but then it would not fit with the original story, I had to change the
denomination for effect!

------
ocdtrekkie
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.

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

~~~
ocdtrekkie
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.

------
synicalx
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!

~~~
lyrrad
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amount_in_controversy)

~~~
synicalx
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.

------
jagermo
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.

~~~
vita17
This website is awfully damning considering the game was supposed to be
released over a year ago:

[https://starcitizentracker.github.io/](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.

~~~
jochung
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.

~~~
qplex
Freelancer was a great game, I really enjoyed playing it.

I'm not sure how much Chris Roberts had to do with the final product but I
don't think Freelancer was a failure when it was released.

~~~
jochung
Sure but go read the original pitch for it on wikipedia. It sounds word for
word like Star Citizen. If we get another Freelancer, the project will have
failed once again... it'll be years overdue and missing 90% of its promised
feature set.

I dunno if you've played it recently btw, but it hasn't aged that well either.

Ambition and wild ideas are fine, but you shouldn't make promises you can't
deliver on.

------
bdemarchi
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
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.

------
huhtenberg
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.

~~~
larkeith
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
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
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
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?

~~~
erikj
Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.

~~~
frik
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.

~~~
erikj
No, it's still using Valve's fork of that old library (Ipion Virtual Physics)
that's referred in the documentation to as VPhysics.

------
danielvf
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
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
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
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
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?

~~~
drawnwren
This gets particularly weird when you consider the legal obligation to provide
upstream patches to bugs. Are they now on the hook to patch Crytek with
Lumberyard fixes?

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

~~~
usrusr
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.

------
georgeecollins
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.

------
bobsgame
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
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...](https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees-
not-paid)

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

~~~
JohnStrange
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.

------
puppetmaster40
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.

------
59nadir
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
Do you not consider making game engines and licensing their use to be a
legitimate business model?

~~~
TylerE
Not especially?

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

~~~
rtpg
It's still their product? I don't see how price has anything to do with
legitimacy of license agreements

