Crytek is making lay offs and confirms that Crysis 4 has been put "on hold."
The developers best known for making the first Far Cry, Crysis, Ryse: Son of Rome, Hunt: Showdown, and game dev tool CryEngine announced the news in a social media post earlier today, writing that it's laid off roughly 60 employees working on game development and shared services.
"Like so many of our peers, we aren't immune to the complex, unfavorable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years," the post says. "It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees." Crytek then confirms that it's been "trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown 1896," its successful PvPvE extraction shooter, after pausing development on the next Crysis game late last year.
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"While Hunt: Showdown 1896 is still growing, Crytek cannot continue as before and remain financially sustainable. Even after ongoing efforts to reduce costs and cut operating expenses, we have determined that layoffs are inevitable to move forward. Crytek will offer affected employees severance packages and career assistance services."
Crytek now seems solely focused on expanding Hunt: Showdown "with great content," while continuing to support CryEngine. It doesn't publicly have any other games in the pipeline - apart from the Crysis 4 that's just been put on ice, that is. That news is particularly worrying as sci-fi shooter Crysis was the hit that put Crytek on so many people's radar and proved CryEngine capable of making jaw-dropping game.
Layoffs in the video game industry have been particularly brutal this past year, with just about every big name publisher and developer shedding staff. In the last couple weeks alone, EA shrank BioWare even further, the Smite 2 studio said goodbye to more workers, and Killer Instinct rebooters Iron Galaxy let go of 66 employees as a "last resort."
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