Video game developer Crytek has suffered a round of staff layoffs, amidst continued financial troubles. This comes a few weeks after the company broke its silence following reports of unpaid staff wages, and announced it would be selling its Budapest, Sofia, Seoul and Shanghai studios.
15 staff, from the in-house publishing and marketing team, are set to lose their jobs, in a statement released from their main office in Frankfurt, Germany. The company is in the process of scaling down the business, in order to focus on game development and technology, according to co-founder and managing director Avni Yerli. In the statement, Yerli concluded “one of the inevitable effects of this process has been the redundancies we are announcing today”, but continued by saying “we are extremely grateful for the hard work and dedication of each and every person at Crytek”. Thankfully, the staff leaving the company are due to receive comprehensive support to reflect the gratitude of Crytek, although that doesn’t make up for the reality of losing your job.
Crytek, the developer behind titles such as the Crysis series, Far Cry and the recently released The Climb and Robinson: The Journey, was once the company to beat; Crysis was a visual marvel, graphically a long way ahead of the competition, and CryEngine felt like it would be the future of gaming. Fast forward, with mismanagement and and wrong direction, the company is unfortunately now a shadow of its former self.
The developer is currently working on the free-to-download shooter Warface, and this is where some see the problem with Crytek; choosing continued failed paths of mobile games, free to play and VR, and expanding far beyond their means. If the company had stuck to what made them successful, and continued with traditional AAA titles, we wonder if they would have travelled a completely different route over the last few years.
We wish the staff losing their jobs a speedy return to work, and hope Crytek can pick themselves up and return to their former glory.
