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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

#101

Post by theandrewbailey »

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…

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

Back when Lumberyard was announced, I wondered if Amazon would buy out Crytek. Figuring it's payroll issues, I thought it would be a bargain if Amazon really wanted to seriously get into game development. Since it's been two years, I don't think that it will happen. Now I'm thinking that Amazon will buy the scraps during liquidation.

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

#102

Post by dsl »

didibus wrote: post #17
dsl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can. They moved the bulk of the engine over to Lumberyard and publicly announced that, but under the hood are probably using the more mature CryEngine where Lumberyard is lacking. EDIT: It gets more confusing, Lumberyard is apparently a hard fork of CryEngine that Amazon paid for. My guess is they switched to Lumberyard for better licensing terms, but kept all the enhancements made to CryEngine post-fork.

Amazon also made enhancements to Lumberyard since though. Not sure why you'd call one more mature then the other. Do you have experience with both and can attest that Lumberyard now lacks behind the latest CryEngine?

I think that exactly the root of the problem here. They wanted to benefit from the enhancements on both sides of the fork, already signed an exclusive agreement with Cry, but want the fee structure from Amazon.

I only mentioned CryEngine being more mature because they have more dedicated resources working on it, and from what I understand dev studios contribute fixes back to the engine as well.

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

#103

Post by Nadya »

rootlocus wrote: post #96
girvo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we’re talking about private for-profit companies. Sort of changes the calculus a little, I think. I don’t have sympathy for either company here.

The law doesn't consider your sympathy in either case, and that's the point.

And the court of public opinion often doesn't consider the law and that's their point. Even if completely justified under the law it can be bad PR.

For example, McDonalds could have refused to give St. Jude winnings for one of their Monopoly games because pieces were given to St. Jude in such a way that broke the rules. Or asked for the money back once it was found to be part of a fraud scheme.

Is McDonald's going to back out of paying the winnings and eat the bad PR of "Refuses to give money to hospital known for saving dying children." just because they have the legal right to do so? Hell no.

[0] http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/10/lt.12.html

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

#104

Post by jarsin »

flohofwoe wrote: post #46
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?

You can scratch Stingray from the list unfortunately: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/stingray/learn-explor...

HAHA Autodesk strikes again. Google should buy them..a match made in heaven.

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

#106

Post by frik »

jochung wrote: post #62
vita17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People seem eager to forget Chris Roberts pitched this exact game before, as Freelancer, and that was released years too late, with none of the promised "living universe" features, after being bought out and handed off to someone else. Fool me once... I've heard people say "the technology didn't exist back then!", which is true. But the technology doesn't exist today either. Games have gotten a lot better at drawing…

Yeah, I am still mad at Chris Roberts that he sold his former company "Digital Anvil" to Bill Gates / Microsoft in 2000.

Of course "Freelancer" (hyped like "Star Citizen" today, and basically the very same game idea) came out late and most announced features were missing - actually the same features are now announced again by Chris Roberts for Star Citizen.

And another game of "Digital Anvil" never got released thanks to Microsoft, it was called "Loose Cannon". It was announced in 1998 and it would have been the first 3D open world game in the very same sense of Grand Theft Auto 3, just released 1-2 years before GTA 3 !! Nowadays we could be playing Loose Cannon V and no one would play GTA. Anyway "Loose Cannon" was very good looking for it's time, and the actual gameplay video footage back then looked really promising. Barely any media can be found online today, but much more is on CD-ROMs of old PC Game mags (1998-2001 era):

https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/15/loose-cannon-xbox-cancel...

http://www.ign.com/games/loose-cannon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Anvil

Like the poster above me, I say the same: "Fool me once..." to both Chris and Bill.

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

#107

Post by frik »

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.

Does Source ship nowadays with a recent Havok physics library nowadays?

I heard they used to use an decade old physics library that just got bought by Havok company in the meantime and has nothing to do with the Havok physic engines everyone knows.

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

#108

Post by larkeith »

glenneroo wrote: post #97
larkeith wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if Star Citizen is really using an unlicensed instance of CryEngine for Squadron 42, that's a significant breach of contract, and effectively piracy. It seems absurd to avoid Crytek for responding with legal measures.

AFAIK they moved to the customized version of CryEngine (Amazon's Lumberyard) beginning of this year due to engine limits. They even hired some ex-CryEngine-devs to get things going but in the end they (supposedly) had no other choice but to switch. So theoretically they haven't been using CryEngine at all since an entire year.

Amusingly, that's also part of the lawsuit - Crytek claim Star Citizen were contractually obligated to use CryEngine exclusively. It's somewhat irrelevant, as, if they used CryEngine at all for Squadron 42, even if only for development (especially if promotional footage/beta testing/etc was on CryEngine), that remains unacceptable.

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

#109

Post by erikj »

frik wrote: post #107
erikj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source is pretty expensive due to the mandatory Havok fee.

Does Source ship nowadays with a recent Havok physics library nowadays? I heard they used to use an decade old physics library that just got bought by Havok company in the meantime and has nothing to do with the Havok physic engines everyone knows.

No, it's still using Valve's fork of that old library (Ipion Virtual Physics) that's referred in the documentation to as VPhysics.

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

#110

Post by king_phil »

bonesss wrote: post #90
Narretz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that CryEngine is now offerend under different terms compared to when it was licensed to StarCitizen.

It's also possible that the Engine is, and was, offered under multiple terms simultaneously to hit different parts of the market. I'm speculating (yay internet!), but for Enterprise components developers profit from there's often a "buy the cow up front" option along with a "free cow today for a sip of the milk tomorrow" model. Star Citizen, particularly before the crowd funding, wouldn't have wanted to give them a l…

What does it matter? Pacta sunt servanda...?
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