14 DAY TRIAL // Here is some bad news for Crysis fans. It appears that Crytek, the well known developer of the PC benchmarking series of games Crysis and the latest Ryse exclusive title for Xbox One may soon go bankrupt.
Although the company has yet to confirm the gloomy news, German video games magazine Gamestar claims Crytek may have been financial issues and may soon file for bankruptcy if it doesn't receive a cash injection.
The reasons behind Crytek's financial problems are various and start with the fact that its CryTek engine's adoption is nowhere near where the company hoped to be.
Another reason for the company's desperate situation seems to be the fact that Ryse: Son of Rome did not sell well enough to justify the development costs. Moreover, it appears that Crytek was so far behind with the development of the game with just a few months before it should have been released that the studio had to hire extra manpower to finish it on time.
We're not talking about several new employees here, but a lot more people, which led to the increase of the gaming development budget by a lot. Those money haven't been recovered since Ryse was a flop.
A good looking game with nice graphics and interesting combat system (though repetitive), but lacking depth. The fact that Ryse did not come up with anything innovative was the thing that hurt the game's sales the most.
Now the same German video games magazine claims that lots of major publishers are now waiting for Crytek's announcement so that they can snatch some of the studio's IPs cheaper than usual.
Others seems to be interesting in acquiring Crytek instead of going the auction way in order to buy the IPs they want. Buying Crytek would secure all the studio's IPs and the talent along with it.
One of the big publishers interested to buy Crytek seems to be Wargaming, the famous publisher of free to play games). This would probably mean Crytek will never go back to making single player games.
Speaking of free to play games, Crytek's recently released Warface game was not successful anywhere except Russia, which is another reason for the company's financial troubles.
According to Gamestar, Crytek now has around 800 employees and their salaries were paid late. This is a huge number for a studio like Crytek that did not have any success with one of its products in the last couple of years.
But there's more to it, some the studio's key employees have already started to apply for other jobs to other gaming developers.
Avni Yerli, the company's CEO claims his company should receive a cash injection very soon, which could keep the studio afloat until the development of Homefront: The Revolution ends next year, but Crytek's financial problems are not that simple to solve.
Crytek has yet to officially comment on the recent news, so take it with a grain of salt until more sources close to the matter confirms it. We expect more or less official info on Crytek's financial status to emerge in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Update: Crytek recently issued an official statement regarding these allegations, which you can read here.