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Star Citizen Discussions v7
- Thread starter Brett C
- Start date
But enough about the Anniversary Sale - what about CryTek's lawsuit?
As far as we can tell:
- CIG obtained an 'enhanced license' for Star Citizen. (this is what they mean by 'bought out' - it likely provides a lot of freedom to CIG from Crytek).
- during the negotiations for that license, the price was reduced in exchange for CIG co-operating with Crytek in a mutually beneficial manner.
- CIG have changed their engine to lumberyard, and are ignoring their license.
Crytek are arguing that, per the negotiations, CIG were required to provide 'services' in exchange for that price reduction and those 'services' were not delivered.
Whether this is legally enforceable will be determined by a court of law. (but do not assume that 'promises' during negotiations are not enforceable - AFAIK it's not that simple).
That's interesting, and in line with what they're currently doing with Intel and have previously done with AMD and others - tempting the whales to pony up yet more cash for "exclusive content", "first-of-its-kind technology" etc via a raft of "strategic partners".
It's a job that's suddenly got the potential to be a lot more challenging than it was this time yesterday though...
Promise can be formed as written contract as part of agreement.
As others point out it is court to decide was that agreement that binding.
Also none of that invalidates rest of complains.
The problem is that people that aren't contract lawyers are trying to interpret contract law. I'd guess a promise in the contract means a very definite thing and not the same thing as me promising my daughter I'll play with her after dinner.
But obviously most CiG backers are legal experts, it kind of explains where the whales get the money from.
Idris4U lawyers.
Where there's a game, there's a claim...
maybe this has been discussed somewhere in this behemoth thread but if this does get nasty and what have you wouldnt it be logical that CIG will be told to remove all aspects of CryEngine from the game? wouldnt that mean that they are basically back at square one in terms of the development and having to look for a new engine (cue MOAR refactoration ad nauseum)?
IANAL but this is my understanding of the arguments:
If they're found to have breached contract by moving to Lumberyard, the argument may be that CIG did so to avoid paying future royalties to CryTek or whoever ended up owning the rights. Again, if that's found to be the case then the court will factor potential future royalties into any damages awarded.
In this context they take "promise" to mean a legally enforceable clause in the contract.
CryTek are saying that the contract between them and CIG stipulated that CIG may only use the version of CryEngine that was licensed for use, and that there was an agreement in place that CIG would not use any other engine. Switching engine to Lumberyard (even though it's a fork of CryEngine) would be a breach of that agreement.
Assuming they've been paid for any unit sales up to the switch to Lumberyard (though I doubt this as CIG will likely argue that these are not yet sales, but preorders) then CryTek will be arguing for lost revenue for any sales *after* the switch to Lumberyard and will also argue for *future* losses. This may even require CIG to reveal their estimates for the number of units they expect to sell over the lifetime of the game.
The lawsuit argues that CIG made bugfixes and optimisations to the engine but did not share them as per the terms of the agreement. This one should be really easy for a court to verify as there'll be a communications trail.
The issue here is that CIG sell Squadron 42 separately from Star Citizen. At the time of the agreement, CIG's plan was for them to be part of the same game. But that's clearly no longer the case, so if CIG are licensed to use the engine on one product but were using it for the development of two, that's a breach of the contract.
I suspect this is an attempt to get the whole $170m or so taken into account as applicable revenue rather than just sales of the base game(s) which amount to a much smaller fraction of the total cost. They *are* using CryEngine as a part of their marketing materials for these ship sales, but it'll be interesting to see whether they succeed on this point as it would vastly affect the level of damages awarded.
The point is they were *supposed* to keep using CryEngine. They'll presumably argue that as SQ42 was originally part of one larger game at the time of the original agreement, splitting it out breaches the contract even if they split it out to use a different engine (thus keeping Star Citizen as the sole game on the license). I suspect they'll argue that CIG split it out and moved to a different engine as a way of avoiding paying royalties on sales of SQ42.
The engine gets plenty of positive attention. The game looks gorgeous. What gets negative attention is CIG's inability to work with the engine to deliver on their game.
Of course this is about them being "dumped for Lumberyard". It's the same engine, CIG have even told us they're using the same branch of both CryEngine and Lumberyard so the switch was really easy (basically just replacing copyright notices). The question is whether they switched to Lumberyard to avoid paying royalties and if they did so in breach of an active contract. It looks like they're in breach, but we've only seen one side of the argument so far -- other than CIG saying "uh, we're not using CryEngine in case you hadn't noticed" -- and there may be valid exit clauses that CIG adhered to that nullify most of the arguments.
When you have a legal issue I suggest you get a lawyer and don't try and defend it by yourself, you'll get eviscerated.
Promising something and ending up contractually obliged is actually pretty easy the moment money or goods change hands. The majority of these documents are defining the edges, things like exit clauses and variations from the norm rather than being required for it to count as a contract at all.
Lumberyard is effectively a different engine (even if it's exactly the same branch of CryEngine that CIG were using). Ordering them to switch to another engine would cause no harm to CIG.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
We are asuming the Coutts loan is still outstanding. I am not familiar with HMRC timing on tax credits but is it possible this loan has been repaid and is by now water under the bridge? Or is it still outstanding? Is there any public register where this can be checked?
Its perfect for CIG. They can announce they were "this close" to releasing the final product, but then nasty crytek came along and destroyed all their plans. But no problem, it can all be refactored using another engine, possibly even one they make themselves that will be perfect for the job of providing the fidelity demanded by CR!!! And this time round, it will be built from the ground up with the ability to handle massive framerates with a bazillion polygons and 100000 player instances and it will be wonderful! And all they need is a bit more funding from backers, so, here's another ship sale!
It's also the perfect excuse not to show anything from SQ42.
When is this "stream" supposed to be?
Next Friday. At this point I expect CIG to execute total communication shutdown of related properties, because anything they will say or show can be use against them in court.
December 21st I think - and yeah, given all this, I'd be surprised if they went ahead and revealed a "vertical slice" (aka a "pre-rendered run-through of totally not a mock up made in an engine not even closely related to Cr*Eng*ne").
oh, i have no doubt it's far more complicated, i'm merely commenting on their wording.
The question could be if it is a "best effort basis" promise or "required to fix X issues out of Y on demand withing Z time".
It is, just remember to make your cheque payable to "CryTek GmbH".
This has been a lot of fun to read. Much drollery, I'm impressed! 
I'll add my $0.02, for that's what it's worth at the maximum.
1) Can't comment on the details as I am not a lawyer, but Crytek wouldn't be spending that much on high-powered lawyers if they didn't think that there had been serious breaches of contract. I agree that there have been negotiations that have broken down.
2) Crytek would want cash. Ownership of assets or part-ownership of CIG would be essentially worthless. CIG have taken a shedton of money and still owe a game, plus have other debts (eg Coutts) so Crytek would want their share of the pie first if push comes to shove.
3) Crytek creating the original demo is huge news. Admittedly it means that CR was truthful in saying that development only started after the Kickstarter, but now we know that the KS was sold on a demo created by a 3rd party. Wow.
4) Speculation that there wasn't a break clause in the Crytek clause is possible... mainly because
5) if it went through Ortwin maaaybe as he's made, erm, sub-optimal decisions in the past ( https://www.popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/ ). Also with him being ex-Crytek and CIG headhunting Crytek staff this could open up a potentially nasty can of worms for him personally. Hopefully I'm avoiding any legal issues here, hah! Point is that IF the contract is borked from CIG's perspective then it ultimately falls on his plate as in-house legal bod.
Hey ho!
I'll add my $0.02, for that's what it's worth at the maximum.
1) Can't comment on the details as I am not a lawyer, but Crytek wouldn't be spending that much on high-powered lawyers if they didn't think that there had been serious breaches of contract. I agree that there have been negotiations that have broken down.
2) Crytek would want cash. Ownership of assets or part-ownership of CIG would be essentially worthless. CIG have taken a shedton of money and still owe a game, plus have other debts (eg Coutts) so Crytek would want their share of the pie first if push comes to shove.
3) Crytek creating the original demo is huge news. Admittedly it means that CR was truthful in saying that development only started after the Kickstarter, but now we know that the KS was sold on a demo created by a 3rd party. Wow.
4) Speculation that there wasn't a break clause in the Crytek clause is possible... mainly because
5) if it went through Ortwin maaaybe as he's made, erm, sub-optimal decisions in the past ( https://www.popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/ ). Also with him being ex-Crytek and CIG headhunting Crytek staff this could open up a potentially nasty can of worms for him personally. Hopefully I'm avoiding any legal issues here, hah! Point is that IF the contract is borked from CIG's perspective then it ultimately falls on his plate as in-house legal bod.
Hey ho!