There is a big german gamecompany that hasn't paid 300+ employees in 4 months so they are bleeding employees instead of firing them.
If I weren't an actual founder of the company, I think I'd be willing to put up with one missed paycheck. Sometimes shit just happens. But if a second was missed, I'd walk out.
we cannot all go to the star citizen team in the end and some of us are too loyal and maybe too stupid or too comfortable and naive.
Is it Wooga/King games?
crytek
i heard that a sister studio in bulgaria no longer has management because of the disconnection in the company.
Further more withholding pay all together is a criminal offence which I believe carries serious jail time.
After months of not getting paid you should lawyer up. The legal system is very much on the side of the employee, if you get fired for getting a lawyer, you'll get even more money and possibly rehired. (I know one person who got their job back after going to a lawyer, it was very much not the outcome they wanted.)
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Crytek-Reviews-E347451.htm
this review talks about the current situation:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Crytek-RVW...
> We had plans at Crytek back when Marco and a team of guys worked on this (and now we are looking to hire some guys from that old team ;) "spoiler alert" ).
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/57wlln/marco_c...
The CIG Frankfurt office (Foundry 42 Germany) is already staffed by a bunch of former Cryengine devs who left Crytek 2-ish years ago amidst rumblings of people not getting paid.
There's also Amazon Lumberyard, which is effectively Amazon giving away Cryengine (or an offshoot of it) for free with ties to Twitch and their cloud infrastructure. That launch came across as a "we badly need money from someone" partnership on Crytek's part, you won't find their name anywhere on Lumberyard.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/09/amazon-lumberyar...
Is this happening for all employees? Do you think Crytek is holding on for robinson?
I actually literally just got an offer a few weeks ago, this changes a lot. I know crytek had trouble before, but Im suprised these struggles are translating to the FFM studio.
under no circumstance should you take work at crytek. the reason for all of this is that the company as a whole has not had positive books for a long time and they did not look for money early enough. this means that they are now in a panic.
Do you anticipate this getting more coverage in the comming days/weeks? When was the last missed paycheck if I may ask?
Thanks again. Your doing good work informing people.
full disclosure: i am from the sofia office but i think that this is dangerous to say because we are fewer than the germans. in the sofia office we have not been paid for two months now and before that we had to wait two months for salaries, so it makes a total of 4 months of waiting. i can confirm that the frankfurt office also has not received money but i am not able to say exactly what their situation is. 2 or 3 months.
i dont think this will get coverage because i will not provide any evidence that will make it clear who i am. if someone can tell me how to prove this without being in danger with crytek i will do what i can.
Up to you if you post it publicly, I couldnt see the harm there but alternatively you could email it from a disposable email to a gaming news site. They are very careful with their sources and can help. They have experience breaking stories like this. You should get a reply in less than 2h from most press sites for a story like this.
I really don't understand why Crytek management did so many rather stupid decisions. Everyone told them, they are wrong, multiple times. The had one of the brst games with Far Cry 1 and Crysis 1. Then everything onwards went wrong. The started multiple developer studios. Developed boring console games like Rise. Dumbed down Crysis from an more open world shooter to a narrow map lacklustre Call of Duty clone with Crysis 2. Then they did a little known Crisis 3 and bet big on Free2Play games, everyone warned them, but the still went on and hit the wall big time. Then they lost several studios, were unable to pay devs, lost engine devs to Star Citizen, did the Amazon engine license deal. Then Unreal 4 engine was released "for free"(*), they reacted not optimal to this event. Now with their Free2Play strategy hit the ground, they bet big on VR and their writing is on the wall. Why can't the just focus on Triple-A games like Crysis 1? They have a very good engine, and had two Triple-A games. Really sad, but it doesn't look good reading the other comments.