Star Citizen maker says engine suit “never should have been filed”

CIG accuses Crytek of selective and misleading reading of license agreement.

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[Farden]

The game industry really seems like they're trying to one-up Hollywood's accounting.

This is a typical SLA disagreement between vendor and customer. This happens on a regular basis across many industries that utilize software product not grown in-house.

The only reason this particular legal wrangling over licensing is making news - involves a well known gaming company (Crytek), its graphics engine, and a long, awaited, popular game (Star Citizen).

If nothing else, this gives CIG another plausible excuse to delay Star Citizen yet again.

Why would this cause SC to be delayed again? They (CIG/RSI) have committed to use Amazon Lumberyard and the old Crytek code simply cannot be brought up to lumberyard specs without a significant re-inventing of code. This is why the switched over to lumberyard in the first place. Also during that period Crytek was going bankrupt and moving from their product was probably a good idea due to lack of support from the vendor.

Let's see.. Star Citizen originally slated for 2015 release. Delay, delay, delay. Here it is 2018 and there still is no official release date.

If I had to guess, CIG looks for and finds any reason possible not to stick to a reasonable product release schedule.

From what I remember reading, that December 2014 date was a 'in theory if we can hit the $2m kickstarter' ballpark date. Obviously they blew way past that figure and thus begun the feature creep which is what has pushed the game back further and further.
I'm not surprised that game isn't out yet given its scope, long dev' cycles are not exactly news, however it does seem like they may have bitten off more than they can chew...

As for this case in particular, Crytek are obviously trying to grab onto any old life raft, however sketchy. Sad really, they're responsible for some solid work in the past.