Scheduled for release today is the 1.3/AMD patch for Thief, Square Enix’s recently released stealth action game. Following last month’s Battlefield 4 patch, Thief is the second big push for AMD’s recent Radeon technology initiative, becoming the second game to support Mantle and the first game to support TrueAudio Technology. Thief has been something of a miss from a Metacritic perspective, but from a technology perspective it’s still a very big deal for AMD and Radeon owners. As a Mantle enabled title it’s the second game to support Mantle and the first single-player game to support it. Furthermore for AMD it showcases that they have Mantle support from more developers than just EA and other Frostbite 3 users, with Square Enix joying the fray.

New Watch Dogs Video Focuses On The Game’s Physics

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Underground Throne is a Dungeon-based RTS Inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Code Geass and… Death Note?

March 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 7 Comments

Nathan Hurde, founder of PawByte, has informed us about a Kickstarter for their latest game called Underground Throne. Underground Throne is described as a dungeon-based real-time strategy game that is inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Code Geass and Death Note. Continue reading →

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Ultra Street Fighter 4 Gets A New Trailer That Reveals Its 5th Character + New Screenshots

March 17, 2014 John Papadopoulos 2 Comments

Capcom has just released a new trailer for Ultra Street Fighter 4 that reveals its secret 5th character. According to the Japanese company, this fifth character is Decapre; a female character that resembles Cammy but uses claws in hand-to-hand combat similar to those of Vega. Enjoy the trailer and some screenshots featuring this new female character below! Continue reading →

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Nvidia GameWorks Available To All Developers Attending GDC 2014

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 7 Comments

Nvidia has announced that developers who attend GDC 2014 will get their hands on its collection of technologies and tools for video-games called GameWorks. NVIDIA GameWorks is described as a collection of technologies and tools that include visual and physical simulation software, development kits, debuggers, algorithms, engines, and libraries that can already be found in some of the industry’s top selling games. Continue reading →

Good news!

After the disappointment that was yesterday news of RollerCoaster Tycoon being announced for mobile, today Atari has revealed that they are also developing a new game for PC!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/03/18/a-new-rollercoaster-tycoon-pc-game-is-in-production-say-atari/

Facebook game incoming

There's a non-combat CryEngine MMO called Wander about doing just that

Wander is a non-combat, entirely uncompetitive, indeed collaborative CryEngine MMO about joy. Pah. Everybody knows games are about murder, and that joy is just something that occasionally rises out of the blood mist, if you’re lucky. 

Mainlining the joy directly sounds like cheating - like admitting that happiness isn’t something everybody else has to die for. Luckily, there’s plenty pretty about this GDC trailer to distract from Wander’s central lunacy.

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KeSPA confirm AHQ League of Legends team were coerced into match fixing by coach

The Korea eSports Association have finished their investigation into the testimony of professional League of Legends player Promise, who attempted suicide last week after revealing the extent of match fixing within AHQ Korea.

After examining replays and audio files from Ongamenet and speaking to Promise’s former teammates, KeSPA have reported that his account of player coercion was mostly accurate - and will file a lawsuit against AHQ’s coach.

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DICE are adding a two handed ballistic shield in Battlefield 4's Dragon's Teeth DLC

Ballistic shields are misnamed, really. They are, thankfully, not convex weapons that policemen fire in D&D-style cones of pain during riots. They’re really anti-ballistic - mobile walls designed to hug bullets to death.

Still, I imagine they’ll come in very handy in Battlefield 4 - a game my own research over the past week has led me to conclude is about lying prone in the grass with your hands over your head, intoning: “OhGodOhGodOhGod” until a skyscraper topples onto you.

With the help of the Dragon’s Teeth expansion, I’ll be able to creep about behind a slice of movable cover instead.

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All aboard the local-motive: SimCity offline mode coming today via update 10

I guess this is it, then. Once you’re done downloading Update 10 for SimCity, you’ll be able to turn the internet off once and for all. You’ll retreat into the personal middling town-building simulation you’ve always wanted, and never grace our front page again.

Thanks for reading. You’ll see us again in the PCGamesN Post-Apocalyptic Pamphlet, shoved hastily through your postbox by a member of the Rebel Alliance against Skynet in 2018. Until then, enjoy life in offline mode, courtesy of Maxis.

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Are ghosts real? Yes, say the developers of Murdered: Soul Suspect

Murdered: Soul Suspect is a videogame about a policeman who gets pushed out of a window, dies, becomes a ghost and then sets out to solve his own murder. He can't be seen or heard by the living, but he can possess people to hear their thoughts and, in some cases, influence them to do or say things using telepathic ghost powers.

He can also walk through walls, but not all walls. Roughly 90% of the walls in the world are "consecrated", meaning ghosts cannot walk through them. Sometimes the ghost of a shed will block an alleyway. You cannot walk through ghosts of sheds.

It's interesting being a ghost! So I spoke to the experts what made this game, two men called Matt Brunner and Doug Van Horne from Airtight Games, all about ghosts and what if they were real.

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Save the penguins: GOG.com to start supporting Linux

In the last week, good old GOG.com have shown themselves capable of tossing out the bad things Steam does, like regional pricing plans; now, they’ve revealed they’re more than happy to adopt the good things Steam does too. At some point in the Autumn, Linux versions of PC games will begin trickling through GOG’s storefront.

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Two victories in one day: Maxis and Blizzard's dramatic turnaround

Remember this date: March 18th, 2014. It’s a special day, where two villains were put in the ground for good. Diablo 3’s accursed Auction House and SimCity’s infuriating always-online “feature” are no more, or in the case of the latter, no more unless you actually want it.

It’s certainly taken a long time, a lot of shouting and a lot of angry forum posts, but the end result has been a victory of sorts. Communities were listened to, and affected significant changes in their respective games. It doesn’t happen so often that it isn’t worthy of note, and it’s just happened twice in one day.

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Kickstarter game gets shelved after almost 2 years; developer doesn't know what to do about backers

I haven’t backed a single crowd-funded game, although I’ve been close a few times. There’s a pretty simple reason for this: I don’t gamble. My father put a bet on a horse for me during the Grand National when I was nine years old and I lost £1. I’ve bought a lottery ticket exactly one time and, again, I lost £1. I am £2 down and have nothing to show for it. Never again. I'm not including drunken poker games, because you never count stuff you do when you're inebriated, right?

There’s an element of risk inherent in any crowd-funding project, and today backers of Super Action Squad (previously Super Retro Squad) know this very well. Amateur developer Jay Pavlina, whose only experience in game design was creating a flash fan game, is putting development on hold because “it’s too big to handle”. 

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Guild Wars 2's Scarlet is dead, but her legacy remains in Aftermath

Bugger. I already used Ding Dong The Witch is Dead this week, so I won’t be singing it in celebration of the demise of Guild Wars 2’s long-time antagonist, Scarlet Briar. After months of scheming and a tale that started over a year ago, Scarlet laid siege to Lion’s Arch and was eventually defeated. And now the citizens of Tyria are going to have to deal with the very messy aftermath. Never a moment’s peace, right? 

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Wargaming.net League Grand Finals kick off on April 4th; we're going to be there, looking at tanks

Wargaming.net’s League Grand Finals are taking place in Warsaw, Poland next month, between the 4th and the 6th, with the seeding taking place on March 24th. There’s a prize pool of $300,000 up for grabs, but the real prize is going to the people of Poland, because they’ll be able to meet our Jules, who we’re shipping over there in a crate. 

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Max: The Curse of Brotherhood gets penciled in for an April 15th launch on Steam

Xbox One launch title, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood is making its way over to PC on April 15th, Press Play announced today.

The platformer is the semi-sequel to Max and the Magic Marker and sees the titular kid search for his brother after his wish to be rid of him comes true. It was originally developed for Xbox 360, but launched first on Xbox One. 

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Deus Ex: The Fall arrives on Steam a week early

Deus Ex: The Fall, Eidos Montreal’s mobile Human Revolution spin-off hit Steam today, a week earlier than scheduled. If you grab it soon, you’ll also get a copy of Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition for free. 

This augmented PC port will set you back £7.99/€9.99/$9.99, which is surprisingly only £1 more expensive than the Android version. 

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Paradox Interactive is publishing Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity

An unexpected partnership has been announced today at GDC. Paradox Interactive, publisher of Paradox’s own grand strategy titles, Magicka and War of the Vikings will be publishing Obsidian’s upcoming Kickstarted fantasy RPG, Pillars of Eternity. 

"We are partnering up with some awesome world class developers going forward," says Paradox CEO Fred Wester. "We are partnering with Obsidian Entertainment to bring Pillars of Eternity to market later this year"

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Farm Machines Championships 2014 has shark tractors

The life of a farmer, what a chore. Getting up before dawn, trudging out into the fields, climbing aboard your lumbering tractor and then racing other farmers for kicks. “Tractor racing!?” I hear you cry. “This doesn’t sound like the good old fashioned farming that made [insert country] what it is today!” Damn right. It’s reckless is what it is. 

Farm Machines Championships 2014 isn’t your grandfather’s farming; it’s edgy and is probably popular with part-time DJs. I mean, you can supe up your tractor and paint is purple, if that’s your thing. No flatcaps here. And it’s out now. 

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Phenomenal Visuals Achieved in CRYENGINE via Quixel Megascans

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Kingdom Under Fire II Customization Trailer

March 19, 2014 Thomas P 0 Comments

Blueside has released a new trailer for Kingdom Under Fire II that focuses on character customization. Kingdom Under Fire II is a RTS and RPG hybrid that has been under development for quite sometime. The game will be coming on PC and PS3, and will offer crossplatform functionalities between these two platforms. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

 

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Ether One Gets A Release Trailer

March 19, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

White Paper Games has released the launch trailer for Ether One; its first person adventure that is powered by Epic’s UDK. Ether One is said to feature two paths; one is a story exploration path free from puzzles where you can unfold the story at your own pace and the other a deeper, more adventurous path in which you can complete complex puzzles to restore life changing events of the patients history in order to help the validation of their life. Continue reading →

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One-Hour Video Details Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints in Solus

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

During the Swedish Game Awards, Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong described the development of his new UE4-powered game, Solus, using Unreal Engine 4′s Blueprint visual scripting system.  Solus is a survival sci-fi discovery game and in this speech, Sjoerd reveals how easy it is to create an indie game thanks to Epic’s new game engine. Enjoy! Continue reading →

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Unity 5 Announced, Aims To Rival Both CRYENGINE and Unreal Engine 4

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 3 Comments

Unity Technologies has announced the successor to its Unity 4 Engine that is – obviously – called Unity 5. According to the company, Unity 5 supports 64-bit operating systems and comes with a completely overhauled audio system, physical shaders, and advanced real-time lighting. Continue reading →

Screen-News

Unity 5 Engine – First Screenshots Show Amazing Detail

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 5 Comments

Alongside the announcement of its new game engine, Unity Technologies has released a set of screenshots. Unity’s CEO said that Unity 5 will be able to compete with both CRYENGINE and Unreal Engine 4, and these shots back up those claims. These first screenshots show amazing detail that was never possible in earlier versions of that engine. Enjoy! Continue reading →

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Epic Games Is Working On A New IP, First Concept Art Revealed, Has Nothing To Do With The Samaritan Tech Demo

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 5 Comments

Polygon revealed today that Epic Games is currently working on an unannounced title that will most probably be powered by Unreal Engine 4. In addition, Polygon shared a concept art from what seems to be a character from that unannounced title. Continue reading →

 

 

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CD Projekt RED Details The Witcher 3′s Delay, Main Storyline Complete, REDengine 3 Optimizations

March 18, 2014 John Papadopoulos 16 Comments

During its financial report, CD Projekt RED unveiled the main reasons behind The Witcher 3′s delay. According to the company, the development team is currently further optimizing REDengine3 and is still working on improving the quality of graphic assets, animations, effects and sounds. Continue reading →

Death warmed up: see Diablo III: Reaper of Souls' Malthael in motion

Diablo III looks its worst when it stands still. Iffy watercolour screenshots like that above are about as good as it gets. But since when did anything ever stand still in Diablo? It’s always been far better represented in motion, and the same is true of its imminent expansion, Reaper of Souls.

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Diamond dividends: Mojang's income more than doubled last year

Mojang made 816 million ($128 million) Swedish kronor in 2013. That’s up from 326 million kronor the previous year.

It doesn’t quite match the figures of Candy Cush monarchs and former Notch employers King, who raked in $1.88 billion last year. But it’s worth remembering that King now employ 665 people, while Mojang is still a studio of 34 - promoting and updating a game now over five years old.

All 34 are now doing rather well for themselves.

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Paradox and Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity partnership is a "personal relationship" with "no BS"

I think we’d all assumed, somewhat oddly in retrospect, that Obsidian would not only build Pillars of Eternity themselves, but that Feargus Urquhart would hand-deliver copies of the game to Gamestops around the world. He’d do so in a rusty old Fallout-themed van, naturally, and stop off at the postbox on the way home to mail out t-shirts to Kickstarter backers.

That’s not to be: instead, Obsidian have joined up with Paradox, who’ll handle distribution, marketing and Kickstarter fulfillment. And both sides seem pretty happy with the arrangement.

“What we both know is there’s no BS,” said Urquhart at GDC.

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Shiny happy people: Giants: Citizen Kabuto creator to Kickstart spiritual successor

When explaining precisely what made Interplay a PC powerhouse in the ‘90s, it’s natural to leap to the in-house RPG invention of Black Isle. But the other half of the answer lay elsewhere in California, with Shiny Entertainment. Their wilful disregard for genre, leftfield humour and, ah, unique character design shone through in Earthworm Jim and MDK, and perhaps even more so in spinoff studio Planet Moon’s Giants: Citizen Kabuto. 

To the eternal shame of Earth and all its denizens, none sold particularly well - and both studios died slow deaths-by-shovelware. But key staffer and Earthworm Jim level namesake Nick Bruty has regrouped with a new team at Rogue Rocket Games to build a new game in the Shiny mould, which he rather hopes you’ll help Kickstart.

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Obsidian & Paradox On Eternity Team-Up, South Park Bugs

A new trailer of Oddworld: New'n'Tasty has been released during the GDC

It looks good, but I think I'll stick with the original.

Oh, and Oculus Rift has revealed the Dev Kit based on the Crystal Cove unit, It's accepting preorders and costs $350.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/19/oculus-rift-development-kit-2/

New trailer for The Forest

Steam in-home streaming users can now prioritise speed or quality

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There are a few big companies about right now who really want to let you play PC games through the screen and inputs of another device - if only you’re willing to pay a subscription, or buy their box, or wait for your bandwidth to catch up.

Of those, Amazon’s PC game streaming dongle is most exciting through merit of being new and unknown - but progress on Steam’s in-house streaming continues steadily. Beta users can now choose between speed or quality via a preference setting, and play with a new mouse emulation mode for controllers.

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Oculus to ship Rift Dev Kit 2 in July for $350; "major breakthrough" in "presence and comfort"

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Oculus are taking pre-orders for the second iteration of their Rift developer kit, which will start shipping on a first-come, first-served basis in July. It’ll cost $350, and benefits from a head tracking camera - as well as a “major breakthrough” in its OLED display.

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Diablo III login bug causes hardcore massacre: players left naked and helpless

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You know that dream everyone has when they wake up in Sanctuary with no clothes on, surrounded by laughing cacodemons? Unlucky Diablo III players logged into the game last night to find their items, armour and weapons had disappeared.

Most found that the nightmare was over after a couple of repeated login attempts - but others were playing in Hardcore, Diablo’s permadeath mode. Cue screams.

Blizzard normally enact a blanket no-rollback policy - but have said they’ll consider restoring ignobly killed characters on a case by case basis, just this once.

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Heroes of the Storm Q&A starts at 6PM GMT, followed by a live match

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At 6PM GMT/11AM PDT today the Heroes of the Storm team are going to be presenting their brains for you to pick apart. In the last developer Q&A, they spilled the beans on the upcoming MOBA’s art, and this time it’s the Talent system that the devs will be discussing.

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Hard to believe: Unreal Engine 4 is available for a $19 per month subscription

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Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney announced a new direction for the Unreal Engine at GDC today. The successor to the nearly ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3, Unreal Engine 4, looks like it will be even more widespread than its predecessor, as Epic Games has released the engine using a subscription model.

For $19 per month, developers will get access to the entire engine with Epic getting 5 percent of the gross revenue if the project is published commercially. The Unreal Engine 3, on the other hand, had a much more complex licensing system that ranged from the free UDK with Epic getting 25 percent in royalties to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

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Everything explodes in the first Sacred 3 gameplay trailer

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In the rush to find an appropriate dungeon to slaughter monsters in, most of the cast of Deep Silver’s Sacred 3 gameplay trailer forgot to put their clothes on, but it’s okay I guess, because we’re watching them from very far away. It’s also hard to spot people amid the fireworks display of magic and explosive attacks. But they are there. Killing things. Wearing not a lot.

I’m sensing a theme. 

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Crusader Kings II: Rajas of India unleashes the war elephants on March 25th

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Crusader Kings II’s next humungous expansion, Rajas of India, has a release date, and it’s pretty damn soon. From March 25th, you’ll be able to start your conquest of the Indian Subcontinent as one of three new religious groups or an existing power. 

I got a hands-off look at it back in January, and was pretty surprised by the scope of the expansion. Take a look below at a highlight reel showcasing some of the major features that Paradox has been showing off in streams. 

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Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion adds player strongholds and guild flagships

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BioWare has revealed the details of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s upcoming housing expansion which was teased a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it’s all a bit pointless. Almost entirely cosmetic, real estate in The Old Republic’s only practical use is that it provides another place for you to store your crap and check your mail. Guilds will also be able to get their own strongholds, ships in fact, and yes, they are pretty pointless too.

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PlanetSide 2's Player Studio items represent 10 percent of in-game item sales for the year

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Eight months ago, SOE launched the Player Studio for PlanetSide 2 in the US, letting players create items ranging from helmets to vehicle decals that can be purchased by other players. 

At GDC, SOE released a video highlighting some of the most popular items and their creators, along with some surprising statistics. Direct your eyeballs below.

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AMD’s Mantle Developer Beta Program Begins This April, Will Go Public Afterwards

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Unreal Engine 4 – Features GDC 2014 Trailer

March 19, 2014 John Papadopoulos 9 Comments

As we said a couple of minutes ago, Epic Games had something in store for us. So here is the company’s GDC 2014 trailer for Unreal Engine 4 that focuses on the engine’s features. Epic Games has also released a massive set of videos on the official YouTube channel of Unreal Engine, so make sure to check them out. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

 

 

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CRYENGINE – GDC 2014 Trailers Unleashed

March 19, 2014 John Papadopoulos 5 Comments

Crytek has released two GDC 2014 trailers for its proprietary game engine, the CRYENGINE. CRYENGINE is described as an advanced game development solution with scalable computation and graphic technologies, effectively making it the fastest high-end renderer in the world. Epic Games may also release today something related to Unreal Engine 4, so stay tuned for more! Continue reading →

CRYENGINE gives users access to the same award-winning toolset that was used to create Crytek's Ryse: Son of Rome, and equips them to develop outstanding games across all of today's leading platforms.

As a first tier of its new program, Crytek has revealed that from May this year, indie developers will be able to use all of CRYENGINE's cutting-edge features for a monthly subscription fee of 9,90 USD/EUR per user - royalty free. Those features include the recently announced addition of CRYENGINE features such as Physically Based Shading, Geometry Cache and  Image Based Lighting - an upgrade already shown in action by Crytek at this year's GDC conference in San Francisco.

More details about the game-changing opportunities on offer to developers as part of the program will be announced in the near future. The CRYENGINE free SDK will continue to be available under its current terms but developers wanting to take advantage of the new features of CRYENGINE will need to subscribe to the new EaaS-Program. 

Crytek's Director of Business Development , Carl Jones, said: "When we announced the new CRYENGINE this was our first step towards creating an engine as a service. 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.”

The launch of the CRYENGINE as-a-service program expands Crytek's online service portfolio, continuing on from their step into self-publishing with free-to-play online FPS, Warface.

http://www.cryengine.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program