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SEGA and Creative Assembly acquire Crytek Black Sea

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Crytek today confirmed the sale of its Black Sea Studio to SEGA Europe and UK-based developer, Creative Assembly. According to the press release, the sixty-strong development team in Bulgaria will now operate as Creative Assembly Sofia under its new ownership.

Crytek’s Managing Director, Avni Yerli, said:

“In the past few weeks, we have worked closely with Creative Assembly and the team in Sofia to ensure that the talented staff at Crytek Black Sea would be well taken care of. We are delighted to be able to announce that SEGA’s acquisition of Crytek Black Sea has been finalized along with the studio’s transition from Crytek to Creative Assembly. This change is a part of the essential steps we are taking to re-focus on our core competencies and ensure Crytek is a healthy and sustainable business moving forward. We would like to thank the Sofia team for their passion and dedication and are looking forward to seeing them do great things as part of Creative Assembly.”

In unrelated news, it’s worth noting that this is the first GDC in which Crytek did not release any tech trailer for its game engine, the CRYENGINE.

From the looks of it, Crytek will really struggle to regain its gaming status. After all, the team is not currently working on any triple-A game and we can’t think of any triple-A game that will be powered by CRYENGINE (as Star Citizen is now powered by Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine).

54 thoughts on “SEGA and Creative Assembly acquire Crytek Black Sea”

  1. Amazon Lumberyard is literally just a fork of CryEngine by a different name, maintained by different people. Hell, even that’s questionable. I wouldn’t be surprised if behind the scenes Crytek helps Amazon out, just like they helped out Ubisoft with development on their Far Cry engines. I think I’ve mentioned this before, the deal went on until at least Far Cry 3 (proof: Far Cry 3 was listed as a “CryEngine 3 game” on Crytek’s own website for a while), yet you never hear about it. Similar to pop singers like Britney Spears, Ubisoft got to act like they did all the work themselves. To this day they’ll say Dunia was so rewritten it was essentially “not CryEngine” anymore. Meanwhile the reality is that a Crytek employee did that rewriting, and most of the things he implemented were features of CE2.

    With Crytek, perhaps moreso than with other gaming companies, you have to take everything with a grain of salt. They like their backroom deals and what you get as a press release has little to do with reality oftentimes. What is uncontroversial though is, Amazon must have paid well or this “Lumberyard” fork would not exist. And there’s no doubt that CIG paid well either. So where’s the harm to Crytek here? The only thing that may seem worrying at first glance is them selling one daughter studio after another. But as you pointed out, they haven’t been making any big games lately. So what do they need hundreds of game devs for? They don’t, so they need to get rid of them, plain and simple.

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    1. Crytek employee, or former Crytek employee? I thought he was a former employee who went over to U-BE-SOFT once they split, after Far Cry (OG)? Other than that, yeah, the [former?] Crytek guy did the Dunia modifications for a long time.

      I’m not sure about CIG though, since there’s extensive reports that they had serious delay issues due to CryEngine before they brought in all of those former Crytek employees who were actually experienced with the damn thing, due to the ridiculously scarce amount of documentation CryEngine actually has. As for Amazon, I suppose it’s plausible that they’ve got some kind of 3-5 year (paid) “partnership” agreement with Crytek that sees Crytek engineers working with (read: training) the Amazon Lumberyard team in the various mysterious inner workings of CryEngine until they themselves are ready to take over for themselves? Hm. Interesting. It would make sense, considering Crytek’s financial troubles, albeit, that would mean they’re technically assisting their competition, since unlike U-BE-SOFT & Dunia, Amazon is actually licensing out Lumberyard.

      Oh yes, Amazon most definitely paid quite well for Lumberyard, considering they weren’t just buying a single license, but rather, a copy of the actual source code, as well as all resale rights to it (i.e. the right to profit from it, which you don’t generally get when you simply license a product). CIG, on the other hand, I’m guessing paid the standard licensing fee, which 4-5 years ago was once quoted to be at USD 1 million, so they paid at least that much, if not more (CryEngine, unlike Unreal, never had any royalty payments after X amount of money was generated, unlike Unreal 3 & 4, so every deal was a one-time payment – supposedly).

      Being a tech studio was their original idea, yeah, that’s a good point, though, I wonder if that really is their intent now, & if so, what’ll happen to Crysis, in the end (oh f*ck, I hope they don’t sell it to EA, which will undoubtedly result in the IP getting rebooted in f*cking Frostbite as some kind of a piece of sh*t joke on-rails shooter that nobody ever wanted or asked for…… >.<)

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      1. Joke setup: What do you call an unemployed Crytek employee?

        Joke punchline: A Cry-Baby.

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  2. What about Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age? Was that cancelled? Also, the upcoming Prey game uses CryEngine

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    2. Crytek Black Sea’s “in development” project has definitely been cancelled now, so it’s quite possible Hunt has been too, though I wouldn’t bury it just yet, since it’s in the hands of the main studio now (last we heard, anyway), rather than some minor branch studio.

      Either way, these extensive delays aren’t exactly reassuring, to be honest.

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  3. HOW? How can you develop one of the best engines and end being owned by SEGA, the very worst example of how a business should be run? This looks like a Twilight Zone episode? Why did they make that series? Reality is more insane…..

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    3. Hey i was screaming about this in 2007, their games arent good they got a good engine and if you ask me unreal 4 is better.

      Before someone tells me “cant you read” i can, crytek grew too fast with pc gamers money and they squandered them in console ports and acquiring studios left and right, i still remember what the fanboys used to say “they are the fastest growing studio” Nope, just wasting money they were lucky enough to get in the first place.

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      1. This, exactly.

        They made some real bank off of Crysis, & they immediately started vomiting out excuses about “PC piracy” to justify their multi-platform CoD-clone sequel. In the meantime, they’re expanding faster than the Romans, & then, next thing you know, their cornerstone AAA IP bombs like Hiroshima. Oops……

        Oh, but it’s okay people, because F2P is the future, & we’re ahead of the curve, so witness me, motherf*ckers!

        Bam. Witnessed.

        R.I.P, so long, & good riddance.

        P.S. CryEngine’s definitely got the more advanced tech (though the gap has closed substantially ever since Unreal 4), but Unreal’s definitely got the ease of use, accessibility, documentation, & broader focus down, yeah, so, point of view, in the end, really, but yeah, either goes, honestly.

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          1. Enough to build me a nice big temple & sacrifice to me as the living God-Emperor of Humanity?

            Awesome 😀

            Remind me to promote you to Head Priest when we’re set up ^^

          3. I can’t do that, I’ll scare off all my other worshippers! 🙁

            Y’know, like that one weird Middle Eastern guy who keeps stalking me online…..

            What was his name, I forget….. Amor? Amar? Hm. ;P

  4. “we can’t think of any triple-A game that will be powered by CRYENGINE (as Star Citizen is now powered by Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine).” What about PREY that you guys reported so much on?

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    1. Indeed. Both Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 and Prey are powered by CRYENGINE. Fun fact is that at the time of writing, I couldn’t remember any of them. Shame on me, I know, however this also shows how hard it actually is to immediately think of a CRYENGINE-powered game. Apart from these two, though, there aren’t any others

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      1. Kingdom Come 😛

        P.S. Star Engine is still CryEngine 3.8, albeit, a heavily modified CryEngine 3.8, with a side of Amazon Netcoding, sure, but in the end, it’s still technically CryEngine, even if only part of an older version.

        I mean, it’s not like they gutted all of the remaining Crytek coding & replaced it all with Amazon’s Lumberyard modifications, just the netcode part (as far as we know).

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        1. Alright, so, I got curious about what the original CryEngine-Lumberyard conversion post said, so I went digging for it, & it turns out I was misquoting the f*cking thing (oops >..>), or I forgot it entirely, either way, my bad. Basically, from what it sounds like, Star Engine “v2017” is now a combination of Lumberyard coding, which is basically just modified CryEngine 3.8 coding, & original coding, as set forth by the CIG engineers, as is required by them for Star Citizen. In which case, they really are no longer using [unmodified] CryEngine coding (my bad).

          As for the netcode; Yeah, they’re using Amazon’s cloud architecture in place of Crytek’s CryNetwork (due to Star Citizen being an MMO, rather than an FPS) but they’re also still creating their own network stuff, much like they were doing previously. However, considering their new partnership, I’m guessing Amazon & CIG are now working on that portion together, for maximum AWS integration & subsequent benefit, since Amazon wants Lumberyard to be all about “massive online games”, which would most likely result in the Lumberyard-StarEngine network coding also being directly integrated into Amazon’s baseline Lumberyard, & not just StarEngine (am I making any sense?).

          No doubt, regardless, StarEngine’s coding will be specifically tailored to StarEngine & Star Citizen, but even so, assuming it’s been done well, that’ll be a very valuable asset to Amazon, as well. I mean, just think of how often we still manage to come across games with sh*tty netcoding, all because of one reason or another, if not multiple ones 😛

          As for DX12/Vulkan – interesting. Good point, considering Lumberyard’s integration into StarEngine (or is it vice-versa?) & the above post, which indicates they’re going to keep receiving Lumberyard updates, rather than this just being a one-time deal. Either way, no, indeed, though I’m thinking Lumberyard will most definitely benefit from this Amazon-CIG partnership as well, considering Amazon’s aforementioned “massively online games using cloud technology” interest. Hm. That would be very interesting for Lumberyard, indeed.

          So, I guess this means StarEngine is StarEngine with a sizeable portion of Lumberyard coding now, & probably some assorted bits & pieces of CryEngine coding, whereas Lumberyard is a sizeable amount of Amazon coding, with a core remnant of Crytek CryEngine coding, making StarEngine….. CryEngine’s cousin? Twice removed cousin? I’m not sure “distant relation” is correct, since they’re not anywhere near as far away as, say Dunia, but still….. Hm. Oh,well.

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          1. Yeah, Lumberyard isn’t about to become StarEngine, now, or any time in the recent future, for that matter, but considering they have common Netcode ideologies, I could see them co-operating on that, in order to have the best possible AWS integration.

            Even if, solely on that.

          2. Indeed, Amazon’s constant updates to Lumberyard means that the CryEngine coding isn’t going to become antiquated bloatware in the coming years, as Star Citizen continues to develop & expand.

            On the netcode front, I suppose it depends on how much their two spheres of focus overlap, & how much the coding does. For sure, the basic architecture will remain the same, since Amazon is focusing on massively online games, so any improvements/modifications CIG makes to that will most likely be integrated into Lumberyard itself, as well. The minute details that CIG does specifically for Star Citizen on the other hand will near-undoubtedly remain Star Engine-exclusive, on the other hand.

            Unless Amazon decides to move into specialised MMO support as well, I suppose…. lol.

          3. “there writing there next lvl netcode in a custom proprietary language meaning the language may not exist anywhere else so no lumberyard definately wont be using that.”

            “may” =/= “doesn’t.”

            Either way, we don’t know, just like we don’t know how this Lumberyard partnership works; is it a simple licensing agreement, or is CIG providing Amazon with tech in return, as well? If so, their upcoming netcode could be a great addition to Lumberyard.

            As for the second part; perhaps, but it sounds like it’s too far out for us to know much of anything about it at this point, anyway.

          4. Unless, of course, CIG chose to share it with someone else, namely, Amazon, for use in the Lumberyard engine, that is.

            Either way, it’s their choice, so only time will tell, though.

  5. Sad to see but Crytek seems to be a train wreck in slow motion. A short while back they were in the news for not being able to pay some of their employees for months of work again and a little while later announced that they were shutting down some of their studios.

    Developing is dog eat dog I guess.

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  6. “we can’t think of any triple-A game that will be powered by CRYENGINE (as Star Citizen is now powered by Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine).”

    Prey. Easy and maybe Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3? Dunno if you class that as triple-A

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    1. Wait wtf? Did you reply to me saying Prey runs on id Tech 4and now you yourself are saying it runs on Cryengine? Dafuq? And did you delete the reply because I can’t see it here…

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  10. Yeah, good points there and I can’t make excuses for Crytek especially in regards to the direction they chose to go after the first Crysis. Speaking of Free To Play I do remember quite a bit of hype from the industry that it was the wave of the future in gaming. Some have indeed made a killing though. Riot Games reported in 2014 that they were almost to 1 billion dollars in microtransactions that year in League of Legends. Incredible.

    What has happened with Nintendo’s legacy is sad. The Wii U was the worst selling console in their history. Something like 100 million Wii sold and only 13 million Wii U sold. What a nosebleed the Wii U was unless you cared mostly only about Nintendo exclusive games.

    EA can’t really lose Bioware imo because Bioware isn’t Bioware anymore and hasn’t been pretty much since EA under CEO Riccitiello got his grubby little hands on them. Funny that the two founders of Bioware when they retired said that EA didn’t meddle with the development of Mass Effect 3 or try to rush them. hmmmm Me thinks they got a nice fat retirement check for saying that.

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    1. “What has happened with Nintendo’s legacy is sad. The Wii U was the worst selling console in their history. Something like 100 million Wii sold and only 13 million Wii U sold. What a nosebleed the Wii U was unless you cared mostly only about Nintendo exclusive games.”

      And they’ve even stopped manufacturing Wii’s. Like, I know this is basically standard with all console manufacturers, but wow, talk about pissing away free money.

      Yeah, but the BioWare label has lost over 90% of its reputation, its studios are either idling away doing nothing, or just generating trash, with the exception of the SWTOR team which is busy working on whatever mediocrity they’re introducing next, so downsizing is basically inevitable soon, in my opinion, which would basically signal the end of BioWare. That, & EA finally confessing that they destroyed Mass Effect & Dragon Age both, by not releasing any further sequels, reboots, or whatnot.

      As for F2P; yeah, much like so many bubbles before, & after it, F2P was “the next big thing” for a time, but for Crytek to launch themselves head-first into that, with no safety net was absurd. EA, U-BE-SOFT, Square Enix, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc. for all the money they lose, still have safety nets which allow them to rebound when they do poorly chasing some moronic delusion (see: Kinect, Virtual Reality, the aforementioned Wii U, & so on & so forth). Crytek has one major IP, & even that one wasn’t doing well when they jumped onto F2P, making it an even dumber decision. Especially when you throw in how much they’ve failed to monetise their only other major asset; CryEngine for so long (& even now, really).

      Also, to be fair, LoL preceded the F2P craze, if not outright caused it. Riot Games found a nice corner of the market nobody was financially exploiting (at the time), & build a game around it, inadvertently re-launching the MOBA genre, in the process. Sure, others were working on their own MOBAs too, but since Riot got there first, & not only that, but also did it well, ahead of the F2P curve, which allowed them to thus successfully both survive, & profit from it, greatly.

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    1. It’s just means people replied, and then deleted that reply. Disqus can’t come up with replies on it’s own.

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      1. OR DO THEY?! >_>

        Sometimes the comments just vanish, you don’t even get a “this comment was deleted” or something.

        It is a conspiracy I tell you! >_>

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