Unfortunately, Crysis 4’s future has suddenly become unclear 3 years after its announcement.
As reported by The Gamer, Crytek has revealed they will be having layoffs. They shared this statement on Twitter:
“Like so many of our peers, we aren’t immune to the complex, unfavourable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years. It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15 percent of our around 400 employees. The layoffs affect development teams and shared services.
This has not been an easy decision to make, as we deeply appreciate the hard work of our talented teams. After putting the development of the next Crysis game on hold in Q3 2024, we have been trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown.
While Hunt: Showdown 1986 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 didn’t really intend to announce Crysis 4 three years ago, but was basically forced to do it after leaks came out, just like Nintendo’s sudden and short announcement of the Switch 2. The small updates we got on the game since then did seem promising.
For example, a few months after the announcement, the company confirmed that they got Hitman 3’s game director, Mattias Engström, to leave IO Interactive and join them to direct this game.
And then in April 2023, Crytek had multiple job openings hinting at the game’s development. To be fair, some of these openings may have been for Hunt: Showdown 1986, or other unannounced games.
In hindsight, it’s sad and ironic that any employees they may have picked up in 2023 could have been laid off for hours now. While we generally understand that this is part of an ongoing wave of layoffs in the industry, Crytek hasn’t told the public the full story behind this.
Matthew Ball’s State of Video Gaming presentation from the start of this year argues that the layoffs are not as simple as CEOs getting too greedy, and this news supports that claim. Crytek may be larger than the stereotypical ‘indie’ game studio, but it still remains independent from bigger players like Microsoft, EA, and Take-Two Interactive.
Other independent game studios that experienced layoffs and closures this year so far include Godfall developer Counterplay Games and Highwire Games, who was planning to remake Six Days In Fallujah. Subsequently, Hi-Rez Studios fired a large number of staff and cancelled three games.
If we gamers can be honest that the industry itself is struggling from shrinking business, we can then be honest that our purchasing power and buying behavior can help shape this business and the particular ways it is shrinking.
After all, these consumer gaming studies and surveys are painting a picture that gamers who say they want single player games aren’t really going out to buy them. Either that, or they’re not as big and impactful a part of the gaming audience as they still believe.
If these possibilities aren’t making you stop and reconsider how you’ve been buying and playing games, you could be abstaining from helping those game developers you say you care about. This is absolutely something we should all be thinking about, if we really do love games.
