I haven’t checked Derek’s website in a month or more. You know, I think I’m officially over my CR and SC break up.
- I got my refund in time
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I see 
Ok, ill bite. 
soo…
… you don’t mind that she is now scre**** with Mattk, right ?
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In other news, forbes posted something a couple of days ago. Forgot about it until a site regurgitated the article by basically just translating it haphazardly today.
“The Alpha 3.6 patch has landed in the Persistent Universe, bringing with it a new law system, black market economy, expanded in-game ship purchasing, and more.”
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An update to the CryTek vs CIG court case:
Obvious conclusions to obviously bogus lawsuits aside, this is where we’re at gameplay wise:
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this game has a lot of innovative and original approaches both technical and visually that makes it head and shoulders above the overrated star citizens. i recently just loaded her up again and the new stuff is beautiful and the gameplay is compelling and engaging. commanding the destroyer is a joy. the explosion effects are perfect and very well optimized with a good balance between visual quality and performance. i wonder how it’s done, some kind of shader effect? good old sprites with special materials? anyway that’s the innovation i like to see which makes this game stand out.
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Another update on the lawsuit. CryTek seemingly wants to delay the trial until after Squadron42 is released:
Also SC seemingly broke through 250M in crowd funding last month:
It’s a strange situation. If the defense of CIG used against Crytek is correct, SQ42 is the “solo” game mode integrated into Star Citizen. However, the way I understand it, they sold SQ42 packages separately and got tax credits in UK on the fact that SQ42 was going to be a whole separate game. So they’ve run themselves into a corner ?
There is some definite murky territory here, and I suspect it was deliberate to try and circumnavigate these very legal difficulties. Speaking from the UK, I was under the impression originally that Sq.42 was going to be separate (which didn’t make sense to me at the time) but now I’m confused - is it actually a single player campaign part of Star Citizen or what?
Yep, that’s their defense in the Crytek case.
CIG seems to demand 500k USD (and possibly more) from CryTek, based on a set of mails sent by CryTek to Amazon in 2019, in which they asked Amazon to state if Amazon granted licenses to the CryEngine as part of their Lumberyard Engine to CIG, conceding that it would kind of ruin their case. Amazon apparently stated that they did (which seems to have been part of their deal when they bought the fork of the CryEngine), and could prove it.
I’ll link to an english news site once I find a news site debating it.
Wasn’t sure if I could trust docdroid, as I never heard about that site before. Glad that you dug up the same link independently.
Crytek’s claims never really made any sense to begin with so this isn’t very surprising that they’re trying to run away without paying for the legal fees now. Basically the whole thing was a lawsuit as press fodder tactic where they attempted to maximize PR damage to get CIG to settle. It didnt work, and they ended up their claims thrown out. Even the sq42 thing was always nonsense given it was only going to be released on lumberyard, the GLA specifically allowed for sq42, and never required CIG use cryengine to begin with. Then by misinterpreting small pieces of the argument laypeople and news kept getting confused. Then somehow people thought they knew better than actual lawyers…
It’s been interesting to see what an attempted intimidation lawsuit looks like from start to the turn tail and flee stage.
Now CIG just needs to focus on their gameplay not being terrible.
I don’t fully agree. One claim had a serious weight, which was the one that a license was only given for Star Citizen, and Squadron 42 as an independent game didn’t have a license. Of course, we might never know what CIG’s original plan to release SQ42 was, but there are two strong hints that it was meant to be a separate game ( namely: the UK tax credits and the fact SQ42 was sold separately on their website ).
At the start of the lawsuit, CIG already had the intention to never release squadron 42 on crytek’s license of cryengine (or maybe at all given how long it’s taking, lol) which avoids the issue completely. It hadnt been released before that unlike the SC half of the game so only one game had ever been released on crytek’s cryengine. A claim can only hold serious weight if it’s on a decent foundation right?
How can a claim that requires CIG use an engine crytek themselves accused CIG of not using hold any weight at all? The exclusivity thing got thrown out because it was nonsense. And then there’s the GLA itself that mentions both sq42 and SC already.
Crytek has immeasurably damaged their reputation here by trying to force a “you must release a game on our engine” clause by intentionally misreading a standard GLA and suing CIG using a press racket strategy. Any game dev that works with crytek in the future likely will be pushing for a way more airtight contract, and discounted terms.
In my interpretation, they sold it separately to the likes of what you have with Fortnite single-player/coop campaign part vs battle royale part. When you download Fortnite you install them both (because of all shared assets), but you need to buy the licence to the single-player/coop campaign separately on their website.
From https://ukie.org.uk/a2f/VGTR: “Video Games Tax Relief (VGTR) applies to designing, producing and testing the game (including DLC and other post-release spend)… [cut] … If the video game is partly developed outside the UK/EEA, slightly different rules apply.”. This means that even if they use assets developed outside of UK/EEA they still can use tax credits under “different rules”.
From the newsletter:
Alpha 3.9 is LIVE! From microTech’s new moons to the vastly improved Friends List that makes teaming up a breeze, there are countless game-changing features to discover. Just update the launcher to experience Alpha 3.9 for yourself. And a big thank you to everyone who contributed to testing in the PTU – we couldn’t have done it without you!
The actual features list is quite huge. One of the fun thing they added is that now there is an automated prison you will go if caught misbehaving 
Reminds of the semi-permadeath idea for Infinity MMO, where you would get stuck wherever your ship explodes and have to wait for a rescue ship either from your fellow players, or wait hours/days for one from the government.
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