Crytek, the Russian studio responsible for Crysis, and owners of the CryEngine game engine, is suing Star Citizen studio Cloud Imperium Games! The lawsuit centers on the use of Crytek’s CryEngine technology in Star Citizen, and how Crytek has lowered its licensing fees for the engine in exchange for prominent display of Crytek’s trademark in Star Citizen.
Well, in case you didn’t know, Cloud Imperium is now running on Amazon’s Lumberyard engine, but the problems the two companies face aren’t over, not by a long shot. Crytek claims Chris Roberts, CIG co-founder, intentionally sought to minimize Crytek’s contribution to Star Citizen, stating that they (CIG) don’t call the game engine CryEngine anymore, but the “Star Engine.”
This downplaying of Crytek’s contributions were followed by the apparent removal of Crytek’s trademarks and copyright notices from Star Citizen, and related materials in breach of the GLA (Game License Agreement).
In addition to that, Crytek claims CIG used the CryEngine for “Squadron 42” which is the single-player portion of Star Citizen. Crytek claims that this isn’t part of the agreement since Squadron 42 is considered a separate game by the studio (Crytek). There’s lots more to read about the lawsuit here.
Crytek is aiming to receive damages of $75,000, along with “indirect damages, consequential damages (including lost profits), special damages, costs, fees, and expenses incurred by reason of Defendants’ breach of contract and copyright infringement.” Crytek also wants a “permanent injunction” against CIG to prevent the Star Citizen makers from using any of Crytek’s copyrighted work.
Cloud Imperium Games has released a statement about the lawsuit, which you can read below.
We are aware of the Crytek complaint having been filed in the US District Court. CIG hasn’t used the CryEngine for quite some time since we switched to Amazon’s Lumberyard. This is a meritless lawsuit that we will defend vigorously against, including recovering from Crytek any costs incurred in this matter.
Once we have further updates on the lawsuit, whether each party settled on something, we’ll let you know.
75k sounds low. Depending on whether they go to court and the length of the process, the legal fees alone could be more than that.
Here is an update. We are now +21 days after this new “drama”. CIG has answered to Crytek lawsuit… and without surprise, once again, the “drama” turned to be the biggest joke of all past “drama” 🙂
Here are all the filed documents available on one single place:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mPjfXrjAf9RUq3_5cJgd-hF-I5XoCQta
Of course, that is not the end of the story. Crytek will obviously claim that breach of contract are real…. but I can’t resist to copy sir Voroxpete’s comments:
In short, we see the reason why the complaint was amended to list everything as being done ‘intentionally’… Then CIG goes and drops a metric ass-ton (that’s bigger than an Imperial ass-ton) of case-law into why that wont fly…. 🙂
75k sounds low. Depending on whether they go to court and the length of the process, the legal fees alone could be more than that.
Here is an update. We are now +21 days after this new “drama”. CIG has answered to Crytek lawsuit… and without surprise, once again, the “drama” turned to be the biggest joke of all past “drama” 🙂
Here are all the filed documents available on one single place:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mPjfXrjAf9RUq3_5cJgd-hF-I5XoCQta
Of course, that is not the end of the story. Crytek will obviously claim that breach of contract are real…. but I can’t resist to copy sir Voroxpete’s comments:
In short, we see the reason why the complaint was amended to list everything as being done ‘intentionally’… Then CIG goes and drops a metric ass-ton (that’s bigger than an Imperial ass-ton) of case-law into why that wont fly…. 🙂