Crytek sues Star Citizen studios over use of CryEngine

[DonFerrari]

Pemalite said:

DonFerrari said:

Eeeer if you have a contract one not assume anything, they follow the contract. But as you said, even open source is very keen on you removing the original developer name from it. And from the OP, it seems to have been several breach of contract.

Doing some digging. Apparently Cloud Imperium games did an outright purchase of the engine and source code last year in the event that they would be covered if Crytek did go bankrupt. (As that was becoming a real possibility at the time.)

http://gameranx.com/updates/id/22782/article/star-citizen-dev-responds-to-crytek-going-under-fears/

Which means that, not only did Cloud Imperium Games own the complete rights to CryEngine, the source and it's use, but it should have negated any and all prior contracts as a new contract superseded the old one.
Then we have the fact they aren't using that fork of the CryEngine now anyway, they have instead licensed it from Amazon.

DonFerrari said:
I didn't say we can't put burden on them, I said we can't put ALL the burden, meaning if you don't know if CIG have any deal with crytek or if their contract with amazon tied it, we can't say it's all on Crytek.

You put as much of the burden on them as they deserve. No more and no less.

DonFerrari said:
Not knowing details on the contract we actually don't know if Crytek isn't a party on Amazon contract.

Doesn't matter.

deskpro2k3 said:

it's still using cryteks codes. not sure what the agreement is with CryEngine and Amazon though.

Amazon licensed/bought the engine from Crytek and turned it into it's own game engine dubbed "Lumberjack". - That is what Cloud Imperium Games is using as a base for StarCitizen.

DonFerrari said:

But in case the one breaching contract is Amazon by selling the license of their engine based on CryEngine3 then they should sue Amazon... we'll have to wait for more data.

Unless of course Amazon has the license to issue licenses for other party's to freely license it's licensed engine.

We would need the purchase terms to be sure what was the clauses. And again their licensing through Amazon may have had other issues that open for the suing. But sure considering both points I wouldn't put that CIG done it out of ill intent.

Before knowing the details we don't know how much of the burden is deserved to them.

Sure, if Amazon have total control over every aspect of the engine and can use any way without Amazon or any licensed needing to make any mention of Crytek, etc, then Crytek would be totally of and will lose money on the suing... I don't think they are dumb enough to put a sue in a case like this. At most they would look for a settling with CIG pressuring they to pay to not get the game in trouble, going to the court will just make things slower.