Crytek implodes...

[Pharcellus]

hothardware.com/News/Crytek-USA-Collapses-Sells-Game-IP-to-Other-Developers/

After the implosion last month of Crytek's UK studios, now Crytek USA pretty much has had its lights turned out, selling off its IP properties in an attempt to generate revenue to keep the bankruptcy vultures at bay for a little longer. They haven't been paying their employees for weeks, in some cases, for a couple months.

Well, I can't say I am surprised. AAA titles and the companies that develop them are just an absolute waste. They routinely screw over their developers and other employees, then leave their creditors holding the bag. It's yet another kind of disease in the industry; one that has been around for a long time (Horizons, anyone?).

If it takes $100 million to develop a god damned computer game, you're WAY WAY WAY overspending; be it on IP, offices, furniture, hype, and/or god knows what else. Then, on top of that, you take a game which was not designed from the foundation to be a F2P game, and make it F2P.

Seriously, what the fuck are studio execs smoking these days? Well, apparently, $100 bills at the very least. Then, when it comes time to make payroll, they turn their pockets out and shrug.

[xaeris]

I find that lately, most "AAA" games are just not worth the money these days. They are getting shorter and shorter, are glomping on massive amounts of DLC (gotta love Mass Effect 3's Day One DLC that included a huge chunk of lore that was actually pretty important to the game's storyline.

A lot of the money is going into making the games look "incredibly awesome" (really, most of what I see are all browns and greys in these 'ultra realistic worlds'). Also, voice-acting and mo-cap and other such stuff that just sucks money like a shop-vac.

The sad part of it is, there are a Ton of indie games out on Steam right now that give you more playtime and a better experience than a lot of these AAA titles. My most played game on Steam? Warframe. ~660 Hours. Has awesome graphics for being an indie title. Still F2P, though a gamer might want to spend the occasional $5 here and there to make things a little easier.

4th most played game on Steam? Terraria. I think everybody knows what that is by now; I don't think I have to explain that one. I've got roughly 150-180 hours invested in that. It cost me a grand total of $6 when I bought it. That's a whopping 3 cents per hour.

Now, look at the rest of my Steam list. Not counting Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, most games have <20h played and I saw probably 90% of the game's content. There's a few 20-50 and a couple 50-100 (LA Noire for example) games.

There's also quite a few <10h games there, a few of them notable titles put out by major companies.

If it weren't for Steam and its indie games, I really don't know how well the gaming thing would be doing these days, considering the millions of people playing these indie games who wouldn't be able to do so anywhere near as easily without Steam.

I think Triple A titles are going the way of the dodo unless they really step up and clean this crap up. Put the money where it'll really make the game better, cut it out with these lame money-grubbing DLC cash-grabs, put the actual developers in charge of game development (some guy in a suit has no clue what gamers enjoy apparently from the decisions we see being made), etc etc.

Also: We need more original IPs. Call of Duty #3894839 just isn't cutting it these days, at least not for me.

[Deleted]

Still leaves quite a few Crytek studios intact. And, in fact, the project that Crytek USA (Austin) was working on has been transferred back to Germany.