New reports have come to light that allege Crytek – the game dev responsible for titles such as Crysis and the original Far Cry – has not been paying some of its staff for nearly six months.
This troubling news comes to light courtesy of a Reddit user by the name CrytekThrowaway, who claims to be an employee of the company over at their headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.
CrytekThrowaway explains the situation:
I’m not sure where else to turn at this point. This has happened in the past a few times, but never for this long. Management never gives anyone a heads up, and it isn’t clear to me if they are getting paid or even informed from the owners. The last time this happened we were told it would be the last time and yet it is happening again. Many of my co-workers moved from out of the country to work here and are unable to leave because they cannot afford to get back home due to their wages being withheld for so long.
The poster goes on to suggest that ‘people are afraid to speak out’, and that management will occasionally tell workers that ‘wages are coming soon’, but remain mostly silent.
They add:
Upper management refuses to speak to any of us and our managers have no answers. We have never been apologized to. This isn’t just here in Germany. This is in all of our offices as far as I can tell.
Adding to these reports, Let’s Play Video Games have heard from verified sources that staff at the company’s Bulgarian studio – Crytek Black Sea- haven’t been paid for the third month running. This branch of studio is reportedly up for sale.
Interestingly, Crytek USA was closed in 2014 following a batch of lay-offs, with numerous reports coming through at the time that many workers there had left following unpaid wages.
Crytek UK closed down around the time that the company sold the rights to Homefront to Deep Silver – a number of Crytek UK staff would continue work on Homefront: The Revolution at Deep Silver’s Dambuster Studios in Nottingham – the same city Crytek UK was based in.
Crytek have yet to publicly comment on these reports. Meanwhile, their last game was a dinosaur-themed VR title called Robinson: The Journey.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.