Last year, as the game company Crytek went through near-catastrophic financial struggles, they found help from an unlikely source: the tech giant Amazon.
Amazon agreed to a huge licensing deal involving Crytek’s proprietary tech, CryEngine, according to four people familiar with the deal, all of whom spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about this arrangement. Though I haven’t been able to pin down the exact dollar figure—one source said $50 million; another said 70—sources say it was substantial enough to help Crytek recover from the financial difficulties that kept them from paying some staff for months, as we reported last year.
Last month, representatives for Crytek teased that the multinational company had struck a big licensing deal that helped save the company, likely a reference to this partnership with Amazon. “It was a huge one, probably the biggest one,” Crytek co-founder Faruk Yerli said in mid-March. “I can’t say anything more in detail, but hopefully we’ll be able to announce it with the partner soon.”
It’s unclear what Amazon plans to do with CryEngine, a powerful set of tools that has been used in all of Crytek’s games (Crysis 3, Ryse) and licensed to a number of external developers for games like Turtle Rock’s Evolve and the upcoming Bethesda free-to-play game BattleCry. As a game engine, “CryEngine” is essentially shorthand for a deck of middleware software including a graphics renderer, a physics engine, and other development tools all created by Crytek’s engineers to facilitate game-making. (For an example of what a powerful game engine can do, check out this recreation of BioShock in CryEngine 3.)
Amazon may have licensed out the engine to use for their games, or, as some sources have suggested, they may be using it as a baseline to build their own proprietary gaming engine.
Amazon agreed to a huge licensing deal involving Crytek’s proprietary tech, CryEngine, according to four people familiar with the deal, all of whom spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about this arrangement. Though I haven’t been able to pin down the exact dollar figure—one source said $50 million; another said 70—sources say it was substantial enough to help Crytek recover from the financial difficulties that kept them from paying some staff for months, as we reported last year.
Last month, representatives for Crytek teased that the multinational company had struck a big licensing deal that helped save the company, likely a reference to this partnership with Amazon. “It was a huge one, probably the biggest one,” Crytek co-founder Faruk Yerli said in mid-March. “I can’t say anything more in detail, but hopefully we’ll be able to announce it with the partner soon.”
It’s unclear what Amazon plans to do with CryEngine, a powerful set of tools that has been used in all of Crytek’s games (Crysis 3, Ryse) and licensed to a number of external developers for games like Turtle Rock’s Evolve and the upcoming Bethesda free-to-play game BattleCry. As a game engine, “CryEngine” is essentially shorthand for a deck of middleware software including a graphics renderer, a physics engine, and other development tools all created by Crytek’s engineers to facilitate game-making. (For an example of what a powerful game engine can do, check out this recreation of BioShock in CryEngine 3.)
Amazon may have licensed out the engine to use for their games, or, as some sources have suggested, they may be using it as a baseline to build their own proprietary gaming engine.
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Four sources told the site that Amazon agreed to a licensing deal for Crytek's in-house game-building toolset, CryEngine 3, to the tune of $50-$70 million. Sources briefed on the deal but not authorized to speak publicly said Crytek's pact with Amazon was large enough to help pull Crytek out of the financial hardships it faced last year, which resulted in layoffs and low morale.
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