14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Crytek has announced that it is introducing a new engine as service concept to the CryEngine, which means that the entire set of development tools will be offered to indie developers starting in May for 9.99 dollars (7.5 Euro) a month.
The company also says that it will not charge any royalties when the companies that use its tech actually ship a game.
The move is clearly designed to counter the recent announcement coming from Epic Games, which is offering Unreal Engine 4 right now using a subscription business model, but also charges a 5 percent royalty.
It's unclear at the moment how the core features included in the two game engines compare and which is best suited for future projects.
Carl Jones, the director of business development, is quoted on the official site as saying that, "We are happy to announce now that the latest update of CRYENGINE will soon be available to all developers on a subscription basis. We are really excited to make CRYENGINE available to hundreds of thousands of developers working with Crytek to make awesome games."
At the moment, Crytek is working on its own free to play online first-person shooter, called Warface.