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Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

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Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#51

Post by vita17 »

jagermo wrote: post #32

I never understood why CR choose CryEngine. Yes, it can Single Player games make look beautiful, but when it comes to Multiplayer, it never really could compete with Unreal Engine. Just look how much work RSI has to do, to get the netcode working - and so far, they still are limited to 24 players. In addition, the requirements of the CryEngine have always been high, the FPS drops and a lot of other performance proble…

This website is awfully damning considering the game was supposed to be released over a year ago:

https://starcitizentracker.github.io/

As you can see, development has stalled and very little progress is being made.

To answer your question: they chose a game engine to create shiny demos and carefully crafted videos. They have no intention of releasing a fully playable game. They just need to keep the hype going to keep selling virtual spaceships and virtual land.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#52

Post by rootlocus »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #30

Well that's a nail in the coffin of Cryengine. Who would want to deal with lawsuits just for using a (kind of) free engine, when we have Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, StingRay, Source, Godot, Phyre, Blender?

They're not dealing with a lawsuit because they're using a free engine. They had a very specific contract with Crytek which they breached multiple times.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#53

Post by rootlocus »

kristofferR wrote: post #43

Tldr: Crytek allows Amazon to create a cheap fork of CryEngine, then sues CryEngine users that switch to it.

This is false. They sued one user who had a contract not to switch to other engines.

> 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines.

If you don't want to get sued, don't sign contracts and breach them.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#54

Post by jchw »

rootlocus wrote: post #49
jchw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm confused about is this. I thought Star Citizen moved to Amazon Lumberyard, which I believe is a fork of CryEngine. What confidential information could they have that Lumberyard hasn't already put into the open?

> 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines.

Ah, that's interesting. I was referring to the claim that they revealed confidential information about Cry Engine, but that explains the meat of this lawsuit. I didn't read through the whole thing.

I'm not a big follower of Star Citizen and frankly even with all of the evidence presented I'm not sure what the outcome should rightfully be, but it sounds to me like CIG is knee deep right now.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#55

Post by rootlocus »

jchw wrote: post #54
rootlocus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 36. Section 2.1.2 of the GLA contained a critical promise from Defendants that they would not develop the Star Citizen video game using any other video game engines.

Ah, that's interesting. I was referring to the claim that they revealed confidential information about Cry Engine, but that explains the meat of this lawsuit. I didn't read through the whole thing. I'm not a big follower of Star Citizen and frankly even with all of the evidence presented I'm not sure what the outcome should rightfully be, but it sounds to me like CIG is knee deep right now.

Regarding the confidential information:

> 50. On May 6, 2015, Defendants began posting a series of videos online titled "Bugsmashers." The videos contain excerpts of information from CryEngine that were confidential, in breach of the GLA, and should not have been shown to the public. The series continues today.

> 51 On August 26, 2017, news reports announced a partnership between Defendants and a third party developer, Faceware Technologies. Upon information and belief, as a result of the partnership, Faceware received access to the underlying technology for CryEngine (including computer source code). Defendants did not disclose this third party developer's involvement to Crytek, let alone obtain Crytek's prior written approval. This was entirely in breach of the GLA.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#56

Post by wccrawford »

drawkbox wrote: post #16

Lumberyard is a fork by Amazon of CryEngine that they licensed in 2015 that Star Citizen switched to. If developers start with that engine they are ok but looks like there were deals with Crytek on games/content before that date. Legal challenges from a game engine is something that can scare away new projects in that engine. This wouldn't affect most developers as Star Citizen signed with CryEngine but it won't be a…

>but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon.

Seriously. I can't imagine anyone seeing this lawsuit and reading about the terms of these contracts and thinking, "Yeah, CryEngine sounds like a good idea."

Lumberyard is far more likely to have good licensing terms, plus Amazon integration, and Unreal Engine is a serious competitor with very clear licensing terms and pretty extreme access to the engine code itself.

IMO, Crytek should take a deal as soon as its offered, here.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#57

Post by INTPenis »

vita17 wrote: post #51
jagermo wrote: post #32

I never understood why CR choose CryEngine. Yes, it can Single Player games make look beautiful, but when it comes to Multiplayer, it never really could compete with Unreal Engine. Just look how much work RSI has to do, to get the netcode working - and so far, they still are limited to 24 players. In addition, the requirements of the CryEngine have always been high, the FPS drops and a lot of other performance proble…

This website is awfully damning considering the game was supposed to be released over a year ago: https://starcitizentracker.github.io/ As you can see, development has stalled and very little progress is being made. To answer your question: they chose a game engine to create shiny demos and carefully crafted videos. They have no intention of releasing a fully playable game. They just need to keep the hype going to ke…

I just have to mention that it is playable and I know at least one friend who is having fun playing it.

I never tried it.

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#58

Post by shak77 »

wccrawford wrote: post #56
drawkbox wrote: post #16

Lumberyard is a fork by Amazon of CryEngine that they licensed in 2015 that Star Citizen switched to. If developers start with that engine they are ok but looks like there were deals with Crytek on games/content before that date. Legal challenges from a game engine is something that can scare away new projects in that engine. This wouldn't affect most developers as Star Citizen signed with CryEngine but it won't be a…

>but it won't be attracting people to use CryEngine over others anytime soon. Seriously. I can't imagine anyone seeing this lawsuit and reading about the terms of these contracts and thinking, "Yeah, CryEngine sounds like a good idea." Lumberyard is far more likely to have good licensing terms, plus Amazon integration, and Unreal Engine is a serious competitor with very clear licensing terms and pretty extreme access…

What's "Amazon integration"?

And why is Amazon developing a game engine?

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#59

Post by shak77 »

erikj wrote: post #47
bufferoverflow wrote: post #30

Well that's a nail in the coffin of Cryengine. Who would want to deal with lawsuits just for using a (kind of) free engine, when we have Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard, StingRay, Source, Godot, Phyre, Blender?

Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.

What are the numbers?

Is Havok really mandatory? Wouldn't it be possible to replace Havok with Bullet or some other related system?

Re: Crytek sues Star Citizen devs for copyright infringement, breach of contract

#60

Post by shak77 »

zero_iq wrote: post #44
katastic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used the CryEngine but often times if you think you "need" a higher bit coordinate system (don't you mean 128-bit? ala long double? Doubles are already 64-bits and 80-bits internally.) you may be thinking of the problem in the wrong way. There's no reason you can't (in most games) have a segregated coordinate system. For example, where each star is the center, the (0,0,0) point. And when you warp from one s…

No, he means 64-bit. Most games use 32-bit floats, (which pose far greater practical precision/range issues in many scenarios involving multiple scales and reasonable distances) and this is what most GPU hardware has focused on until relatively recently. Only newer, higher-end GPU hardware has native support for 64-bit double precision geometry with game-level performance. It's quite easy to run up against the limita…

Would it be the same as this? https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/4175
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