Crytek’s lawsuit against Cloud Imperium Games for supposedly breaching the contract and developing two games on a supposed single license has hit a weird turn. They feel like in order to prove their case they’ll need a working copy of Squadron 42, and in order to do that they need for at least an alpha build to be released at some point, so they’ve requested to dismiss their claim against Cloud Imperium Games and delay the trial until October, 2020 because that’s when they believe some version of Squadron 42 may be released.
Eurogamer is reporting that according to court documents, due to the uncertainty of Squadron 42’s release, Crytek decided to push for a delay of the trial from June, 2020 to October, 2020, with Eurogamer writing…
“Crytek moved to dismiss its lawsuit without prejudice and reschedule the trial to 13th October 2020, presumably the earliest point it suspects Squadron 42 will be launched in some form. CIG has yet to announce a release date for Squadron 42, but back in August 2019 it announced the Squadron 42 beta was delayed three months to the third quarter of 2020.
“In court documents linked to by redditor RiSC1911, Crytek contends CIG still plans to release Squadron 42 as a standalone game, but during talks between lawyers during what’s known as the “discovery” phase of the pre-trial proceedings, such a standalone release became uncertain.”
The short of it is that Crytek is claiming that Cloud Imperium Games breached their contract by making two games only having a license to make one game. Even though originally Cloud Imperium Games did mention that they were developing both Star Citizen (the persistent universe MMO) and Squadron 42 (the single-player campaign) in the actual contract that Crytek claims they breached!
What’s more is that Cyrtek attempted to originally argue in the suit that the contract was for using the CryEngine exclusively to develop both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, but the judge presiding over the case threw out that portion of the case since that’s not what the contract inferred, as reported by MassivelyOp.
The claims are also all over the place. While they initially wanted to sue because Cloud Imperium Games didn’t exclusively stick with the CryEngine but moved over to the Lumberyard Engine, which is an off-shoot of CryEngine 3.8, as we’ve reported on in the past, they’re now claiming that they believe that Squadron 42 is running on the CryEngine and not the Lumberyard and that’s why they’re trying to delay the trial to October so that if/when Squadron 42 releases they can prove it’s still running on the CryEngine. The problem is that the Lumberyard Engine is based on the CryEngine, so anything up to the latest version of the engine that Amazon licensed will be present in the Lumberyard, and therefore present in Squadron 42.
Of course, as mentioned in the Eurogamer article, Crytek is claiming that CIG may not have actually switched from CryEngine to Lumberyard, and so that’s another reason why they’re waiting for the release of Squadron 42 to further pursue their case.
They claim that the game is still running on the CryEngine, but why would CIG settle for a lesser codebase when the AWS provides them with the infrastructure to build out the persistent universe of Star Citizen in order to meet the demands of an MMO? The CryEngine was incapable of that on its own, and much of what StarCitizen became included gutting just about everything but the core lighting system and shaders.
Anyway, it sounds like a mess and Crytek has been strapped for cash for years, lest we not forget when there were reports going around about certain Crytek studios not being able to pay its employees.
Some people are claiming that the trial delay is a win-win both for Crytek and CIG, because they claim it gives Crytek more time to potentially reach a settlement, while it also gives CIG more time to rack in backers and have Crytek pay for the suit. Whether or not any of that comes true is anyone’s guess, but Star Citizen really has been a media roller coaster, mostly due to all the misinformation and campaigns orchestrated to derail the whole thing.
(Thanks for the news tip QudDust)
