Back in December 2017, Crytek sued Cloud Imperium for violating their contract. It took some time but Cloud Imperium has finally responded to this lawsuit. Cloud Imperium has shared the full license agreement which, according to the team, eliminates virtually every claim and remedy Crytek seeks.
But let’s take things from the beginning. According to Crytek’s suit, Cloud Imperium was to develop only one game with CRYENGINE (Star Citizen) and not two (Star Citizen and Squadron 42). Moreover, Cloud Imperium broke the contract when it switched engine, and was meant to use all of Crytek’s logos everywhere.
Regarding the use of CRYENGINE for two separate games, Cloud Imperium stated that the Game License Agreement defines “the game” as both “‘Space Citizen’ and its related space fighter game ‘Squadron 42′”, with a passage allowing for name changes (Space Citizen > Star Citizen). Moreover, this term does not apply to any games made without CRYENGINE, and as we all know both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are now using the Lumberyard Engine.
Regarding the switch from CryEngine to Lumberyard, Cloud Imperium stated that the Game License Agreement says that they are given “exclusive rights to use CryEngine” and the right “to exclusively embed CryEngine in the game”. This basically means that the right was given only to them to use CRYENGINE, and not that they were only allowed to use that particular engine. As such, and given the fact that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are no longer using the CRYENGINE, Cloud Imperium is not obliged to use any Crytek logo.
Regarding Ortwin who was employed by CRYTEK prior to becoming CIG’s attorney and co-founder, Cloud Imperium claims that Ortwin received a signed waiver from CRYTEK dismissing any conflict of interest.
Last but not least, Cloud Imperium did not provide any defense regarding the claim that confidential source code from CRYENGINE was shown on Bugsmashers and disclosed to FaceWare, and regarding the CRYENGINE bugfixes they were meant to provide CRYTEK with (up until the game’s launch).
Those interested can read the full license agreement here and Cloud Imperium’s response here.
Kudos to Reddit’s member ‘Liudeius‘ for collecting the information!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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