If you’ve spent over $100 bucks on this project, get a refund asap.
I read through the paper, and all claims will be very easy to prove / disprove. You would just have to read the original licence contract and compare it to public actions and communication of CIG / RSI.
So Crytek is probably safe on that. The real issue is how much damage ( $$$ & €€€ ) will the court consider realistic. And the bomb is if the court orders CIG / RSI to stop using the Cryengine, or just stop using it in ways not covered / permitted by the original licence. Having to re-aquire a new licence would be reeeeealy bad news for SC. No way in hell to get the old conditions with so much money in the bank.
I am pretty sure we will see a response soon, this will get interesting.
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I think the tricky part is how to prove/disprove that SQ42 is a different product than SC, or included in it. The fact that CIG started to market and sell it separately at some point last year ( IIRC ) starts to smell bad for them, because in that case the whole of SQ42 has been sold without a proper license from Crytek. The fact that it shares source code with SC is irrelevant, what matters is wether it’s sold as a separate product or not.
As for the rest of the claim, it shouldn’t be underestimated either. Any single change to a code of line in the cryengine belongs to Crytek. Remember the switch to 64-bits ? That’s technically owned by Crytek now.
The fact that they switched to LY last year does not erase all the funding they got thanks to Crytek in the 2012-2016 period.
The only claim that is doubtful is IMO the Faceware source-code disclosure, but that’s assuming they indeed did switch to LY and stopped using Cryengine in 2016.
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The way i understand it, if the Licence said “Game” and CIG ever publically called / marketed SQ42 as a “Game”, not “Game Mode”, “Expansion” or “DLC” of Star Citicen or something like that… they are in trouble. Cause the initial licence wording implies that both parties were in agreement on what constitutes a game. And by using that same wording to market a separate product, CIG would effectively admit to contract breach, unless they can make it plausible that they used different meanings of “Game” in different context. Very hard to argue.
I’m surprised CIG hasn’t started selling real estate on other Crytek games. 
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CIG answer to some game news websites:
“We are aware of the Crytek complaint having been filed in the US
District Court. CIG hasn’t used the CryEngine for quite some time since
we switched to Amazon’s Lumberyard. This is a meritless lawsuit that we
will defend vigorously against, including recovering from Crytek any
costs incurred in this matter.”
I don’t think it’s going to be hard to prove that they’re separate games…that separation event was what prompted me to bother getting the bare minimum starter package that included both SQ42 and a starter ship for Star Citizen. After that date, they were selling it as a separate standalone single player experience. SQ42 is billed as an entry experience into the SC universe, but it clearly doesn’t have any effect on it. It also has been stated that SQ42 is now only the first chapter of which there will be more.
Had anyone known that they had entered such a contract with Cryengine, then red flags would have gone up publicly.
Even if they convince the court that they’re not actually using Cryengine any more (Space Engine now) and that none of the engine related code carried over, then they’d still be in breach for not actually using their engine.
I haven’t been following the Star Citizen antics at all, but my jaw hit the floor as I read that lawsuit. It paints a picture of a company that is ignoring their basic agreement so thoroughly that if you took a printed copy of the contract and cut out every section of the contract that they violated, you’d be left with confetti. And the signatures.
I thought it was clever of Crytek to make sure that there was a provision that Star Citizen would be built only with CryEngine. That wouldn’t even have occurred to me. I wonder if they’d been burned on that before.
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CIG burns it’s own supporters so it’s reasonable to assume they’d burn Crytek or any other company that’s stupid enough to sign on board. If only CIG had listened to me about building their own engine - 
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It’ll be interesting to see the proper legal response. Obviously, any initial statement written by the plaintiff in a lawsuit is going to paint the plaintiff’s case in the best possible light, reading crytek’s statements as fact is bound to be innaccurate, often the strategy is to throw as many feasible sounding issues out and seeing what sticks. It can even be used as a smear tactic to try and force a company into a quicker settlement, when you have less than smart people here who incorrectly read allegations as statements of fact you know there will be more elsewhere.
The interesting parts to me are that,in 2014 an SC dev stated they outright aquired the engine and it’s source code in 2013, which would imply a change in the original agreement at some point, yet Crytek hasn’t mentioned this change, they may be trying to pretend it didnt happen or that clauses in the new agreement didn’t apply to the original one, somehow. Doubtless this agreement changed again when SC decided to outright ditch crytek in favor of the lumberyard fork, and that will depend on whether CIG made sure they had an escape clause in the original contract. It seems unlikely anyone would have agreed to some of the points crytek is claiming especially 1. permanent engine exclusivity and 2. free devtime not only sending crytek bugfixes and optimizations, but making sure those bugfixes and optimizations work for crytek’s fork, which would be ridiculous. It would be impossible to define what counted as an optimization if those optimizations relied on other unrelated CIG systems, or had been modified enough as to be incompatible with crytek’s fork as is absolutely going to be the case for many of their modifications.
Some of crytek’s claims are already dead in the water, you can’t prove damages for “showing source code” (which is included in lumberyard which has it’s own unlimited license) when this exists on your website: https://imgur.com/gallery/k4Pq1#ZmH1n4x and it’s all already public.
You also can’t demand royalties for an unreleased “second game” squadron42 that hasn’t existed yet when the only public versions of that ever are intended to exist will be on lumberyard.
Basically this entire thing hinges on whether there is really a clause that said CIG is only allowed to develop games for cryengine ever, which is not likely to be an accurate reading.
It’s also possible crytek breached contract by failing to hold up their end of engine support, which doesnt seem unlikely considering they’ve been borderline bankrupt twice and haven’t been paying their employees over multiple periods during 2014, 2016 and now all of 2017 according to several employees…
Nobody did this here though.
He stated this in the forum post, lets hope that it was an accurate statement. I doubt it though, seeing what amazon payed to aquire the engine.
I don’t see how this is possible without a later mutual agreement, since the terms of the GLA allegedly forbid it.
Not really, seems like a fair quit pro quo to me for allowing them to modify the engine.
I assume the engine was made public at a later date, they just have to prove that the damage was done before that.
Which the GLA allegedly forbids.
If the GLA really says that the Star Citizen game can only be developed with cryengine then the case is clear in my opinion.
Its a shame that they might have been so stupid, lets hope they survive this.
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I don’t think anything like this happened at all. They would never go to court then. In 2014 Crytek was still going strong. And they sold a license for a cryengine fork (lumberyard) for 75 million much later.
This is irrelevant because what was agreed upon in the initial contract has to be upheld, regardless if Crytek later decides to alter their license terms for other customers.
Squadron 42 was initially sold as part of star citizen and then sold separately BEFORE they switched to Lumberyard. All promotional material up to this point were also made in cryengine!
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Damn, then they are doubly screwed. 
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They are even more screwed when you look at the timeline and notice that in 2016 they rebranded the cryengine to “star engine” before switching to lumberyard. Either they paid millions to be able to do that and the lawsuit isn’t all that bad or they completely and utterly screwed up.
If they just rebranded the cryengine to star engine without a proper contract with crytek then they are absolutely screwed. To be honest I could see Chris Roberts do such a stupid thing.
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The post you refer to says that they “bought out” the engine. What this means exactly, nobody except the involved parties know for sure. I bet they simply paid a lump sum of money to avoid to keep paying royalties. Acquiring the engine and its source code does not mean they suddenly own the IP, can resell engine licenses to third-parties, or anything like that. The real question is: did it come with a brand new contract, invalidating the previous GLA, or did they keep the same terms and conditions ?
The fact that Crytek did sue ( and better: with the #1 law firm in the US ) and the fact that Crytek’s statement / defense does not mention this acquisition, paints a pretty clear picture IMO. The GLA still applied. There’s no way both companies would have overlooked that.
I agree it sounded weird to me the first time I read it. Who in their right mind would agree to be bound by such a rigid term ? But remember that Crytek helped to make the tech demo and promote the 2012 KS. Lent some engineers and manpower to Chris Roberts for that. This was more than a simple licensing agreement: it was a real partnership. Crytek definitely had to get something back in return for their help. It wouldn’t have made sense for them to “invest” their time and money into Chris’s project without the insurance that he wouldn’t switch to a different engine the next year after his Kickstarter succeeded. So, thinking about it, I think this exclusivity clause actually makes a lot of sense for Crytek in the context of the Kickstarter.
Yeah, but the question ( at least in terms of damage ) is: did they show source code before Cryengine became free ( they switched last year IIRC ) ? Because if they did, they can argue that some financial damage was done.
They could even argue that they got in trouble now because CIG did not respect their agreement.
Did they never sell pre-orders for SQ42 before the switch to LY ?
How many people are interested in SQ42 more than SC and pledged money to them before that switch ?
Obviously it’s hard to answer, and I’m sure it’s gonna be a point of conflict in the upcoming debate between the parties, but it’s going to be hard to pretend it’s zero.
If half of the crowd-funding income went into SQ42 development ( art, motion capture, cinematics, missions/scripts ) before 2016 ( “half” is just for the sake of the argument, I obviously have no idea of the real ratio ), then that’s pretty much the amount on which Crytek can claim royalties + damage.
Yeah, that’s very true. But even in this case, it does not mean CIG is suddenly authorized to do everything they want with no consequences. SQ42 being a separate project for example, they should have seeked a separate license no matter what. It’s also no excuse for breaking their NDA. It might barely excuse the clauses related to doing active materials promotion and sending back the modified source code, but barely.
So CIG is in trouble no matter what the scenario is IMO, but it’s indeed possible that some claims might get invalidated before this ends.
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Edit: Can someone put zen back under his bridge.
Leonard french is pretty well known for being the “video game attorney”, lawyers are allowed to play video games last i heard. He successfully/favorably settled case against a lunatic copyright troll that was trying to shut down the game StarMazer recently.
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Actual Copyright Attorney reporting from his basement. 
What? If anything, best business model ever! Millions and millions of money for hopes, dreams and promises! 
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oh look more drama…more buzz…more fighting among fans…some will spend more just to help…so more money …ohh.
Where is that hat of mine…
Are they doing this on purpose ?