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2016 Indie Development Fund Spotlight (CRYENGINE) Lured Devs to Change Engines but Did Not Pay Out "We Actually Don't Have Any Money for the Winners".

Dancrane212

Dancrane212

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,961
From the most recent Ghost Theory Kickstarter update detailing the dire conditions of the studio and the likelihood that they will go bankrupt this month.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project..._email_backer_project_update_registered_users

We were lured into a competition for millions of dollars, which also required a change of the game's engine, and we spent months with it. It was our last big hope. But after GT was unofficially marked as a winner, we were then told: "sorry, we actually don't have any money for the winners." As a compensation, we received free licenses for our new game engine, which was totally pointless as we couldn't pay salaries to developers who would actually use it. Today, all of this is brushed under the carpet and the competition site was simply removed,like it has never existed.

Last two years were full of stories like this. With investors, publishers, EU fund etc. It cost us our private life, time that people usually spend with their families or friends. Countless nights and weekends.
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Page for the game as part of the competition is still up.
https://www.cryengine.com/news/indie-development-fund-spotlight-ghost-theory




A little bit of details about the fund via an old Kotaku article. Seems like it was to be paid from CRYENGINE V licenses.
https://kotaku.com/cryteks-video-game-engine-is-now-free-1765078659

CRYENGINE V launches today with a "Pay What You Want" business model, offering developers everywhere total access to the engine's feature-set and full engine source code for a fee of their choosing, and with no obligation to pay royalties or additional service charges. Users who decide to make a contribution for utilizing CRYENGINE V can allocate up to 70% of the sum to Crytek's new Indie Development Fund – a grant program that will see Crytek directly supporting promising indie projects around the world.
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ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

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Oct 25, 2017
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after months of silence, Crytek is still a fuckin mess. Hunt's doing well at least?
 
Truant

Truant

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Oct 28, 2017
6,757
Seems very strange to hinge the future of your company on a competition.
 
Wereroku

Wereroku

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Oct 27, 2017
6,174
Truant said:
Seems very strange to hinge the future of your company on a competition.
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I mean they were pretty ballsy even with the original kickstarter. They have on the campaign page that the 50k they were asking for was nowhere near what they would need to develop the game fully.
 

Deleted member 2254

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,467
Disgusting if true. These guys spent who knows how many hours changing engines in the hopes of a funding they did earn, but never received, and instead of Crytek acting on it they are just pretending this contest never existed. With the bank they are making with Hunt they could go back and pay what is due - it would be too late for that project perhaps but at least the people who worked their ass off get the money they deserve.
 
Abriael

Abriael

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,605
Milano - Italy
Not sure why I would expect anything different from the company that is literally trying to steal gamers' money by suing the developer of a crowdfunded game on extremely shaky ground.
 
Sameer Sedlar

Sameer Sedlar

Member
Feb 8, 2018
395
Egypt
Dancrane212 said:
From the most recent Ghost Theory Kickstarter update detailing the dire conditions of the studio and the likelihood that they will go bankrupt this month.
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Damn this is sad to hear, though it explains the complete silence all this time.
Reading the piece on Cryengine site is kinda heart-breaking, the passion for the game is pretty evident, and from what I saw before and read now, it has an interesting concept. Such a shame to see it die like this.
Abriael said:
Do you happen to have the full text of the update?
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I'm interested as well.
 
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Dancrane212

Dancrane212

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,961
Abriael said:
Do you happen to have the full text of the update?
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Sameer Sedlar said:
Damn this is sad to hear, though it explains the complete silence all this time.
Reading the piece on Cryengine site is kinda heart-breaking, the passion for the game is pretty evident, and from what I saw before and read now, it has an interesting concept. Such a shame to see it die like this.

I'm interested as well.
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Quoting the text from my phone is giving me trouble, but the long and the short of it is the released games from the developer need to have brought in enough money from the holiday sales to pay back debt or they will be forced to close the studio. They are waiting for the numbers to come in and, in the meantime, are trying to save the company.
 
john2gr

john2gr

Member
Oct 27, 2017
407
Developers are also to be blamed in this case. Why change engines when your Kickstarter project was using Unity? You set a goal of £50K so - theoretically - that amount should be enough to finish the Unity-powered version. If it wasn't, you shouldn't set it that low (but then again they wouldn't hit their initial goal and they wouldn't get the money, would they). Instead, you switch engines hoping to get funded by that program, when gamers have already funded your game. Well done developers. Crytek is also to be blamed of course but let's not pretend that the developers were the victims. No one forced them to switch engines and when they switched engines they never revealed that it was done due to the Indie Dev Fund program.
 
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Dancrane212

Dancrane212

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Oct 25, 2017
13,961
OK. Back at my desktop so here is the update in full. Sorry about that, didn't realise it was a backer-only post until later on and the formating was odd on my phone when copying the text.

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john2gr said:
Developers are also to be blamed in this case. Why change engines when your Kickstarter project was using Unity? You set a goal of £50K so - theoretically - that amount should be enough to finish the Unity-powered version. If it wasn't, you shouldn't set it that low (but then again they wouldn't hit their initial goal and they wouldn't get the money, would they). Instead, you switch engines hoping to get funded by that program, when gamers have already funded your game. Well done developers. Crytek is also to be blamed of course but let's not pretend that the developers were the victims. No one forced them to switch engines and when they switched engines they never revealed that it was done due to the Indie Dev Fund program.
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They did communicate that the KS funding was only a portion of the total needed to develop the game front and center on their campaign page. It was that their previous investor (worked with them on their last game, Dex) left the project a couple months after the funding was completed which threw everything into disarray.
 
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Dancrane212

Dancrane212

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Oct 25, 2017
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Well, with no updates in ~3 months it seems the January sales weren't enough to tip the fate of the studio. Disappointing.
 

Deleted member 36708

Banned
Dec 23, 2017
8,802
Are they worth someone purchasing? Sad that a company with their history turned into such shit. Would love for Nintendo to purchase them I know I'm dreaming. I just would love for Nintendo to have their own western dev that could create a FPS franchise for them.
 
Oyashiro-Sama

Oyashiro-Sama

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Oct 27, 2017
2,607
If that had just bothered to read the fine print they would clearly see it was actually $1,000,000 worth of "exposure" they actually won.
 
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