A former Crytek employee, Hasit Zala, spoke about the financial problems that the studio faced in 2014.
Zala worked in the studio for five years. He led the development of Crysis 2 and 3, the Warface franchise and the Homefront project: The Revolution.
In 2014, Crytek started having financial difficulties. The rights to Homefront were sold to Deep Silver Studio, which created Dambuster studio specifically for the game. Zala remained with the project as a game director and headed a new team.
Zala said that money problems forced Crytek to lay off a third of its employees. Some of the remaining did not receive a salary for weeks.
“In the summer of 2014, Crytek started having financial problems. Time passed, we were fed with promises, and the moment came when the team stopped being paid. I tried to somehow prevent the studio from breaking up, and I had to look into the distant future,” Zala shared. – In 2014, our studio consisted of 150 people, and some of them were not paid for weeks. They had mortgages, wives, families-and at this stage a third of the team quit.”
After that, Deep Silver intervened, which saved the project. According to the Audience, almost the same team is working on the game as before: “When we created Dambuster, we had to change something. But it’s still the same studio: I’m in the same place, and the project is on the same code base.”
Source: Develop Online