To some this indicated that it was nothing more than clickbait with the intent to generate some money, but to others there was a big enough glint of truth to look into the matter. We did not report on the story originally because there was not any other supporting evidence (at the time) to make it more than a single source rumor.

Crytek has already come out and denied the whole thing saying they are fine and that everything is going wonderful. They say the claims that Ryse: Son of Rome (an exclusive for Xbox One) has been a disaster are false as are the claims they have not be able to make payroll of their employees.

Still there are rumblings from more than one of Crytek’s studios that paychecks have been delayed or simply absent over the last couple of months. Speculation on this centers around the attempted shift from a regular company to a free 2 play company and also due to slow adoption of their new game engine.

Any time there is a fundamental shift in the way a company works there is going to be some initial financial fallout (just ask AMD). How companies react to this can mean end of life especially if they dump additional resources into a new project that fails to pay off. This could be the case with Crytek and it would not be the first game company to drop out in the last couple of years simply because of shifts in the industry that were not anticipated or adapted to.

In the end we have multiple rumors, now from truly different sources about payroll difficulties, an actual reduction in the number of titles using Crytek’s engine for their products and a simple denial from Crytek themselves. I am not sure about you, but if this were a betting opportunity, I would not put my money on Crytek. Even with the new rumor about additional funding that hit in April. Things in the gaming industry are simple not stable at the moment so we would not be surprised to see Crytek be absorbed by another studio or simply fold.

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