CryENGINE 3 Logo
Yesterday, Crytek released a free version of CryENGINE 3 for non-commercial use. At the same time, Crytek is offering a royalty-only licensing model that would give them twenty percent of game revenue if developers wish to sell their product. The software development kit (SDK) is available at their website and will be updated regularly.
As shocking as this may seem, it was actually expected that something like this would happen since April. It was stated in an open letter to the Crytek modding community by the CEO of Crytek, Cevat Yerli, that Crytek would be working to make their software affordable for the everyman.
Carl Jones, Crytek’s Director of Global Business, has recently said,
With the release of our SDK we encourage creators to try out CryENGINE 3 and hope it will lead to new companies being formed and using our engine. More importantly we expect to increase the talent pool for CryENGINE developers, as well as boosting our online community of users. This SDK contains more toys than we’ve ever released before – it empowers people to create whole new games from scratch, not just mod Crytek’s own games, so we encourage all aspiring and indie developers to try it out.
If one wants to develop for platforms other than the PC or wants access to the source code, then it will be necessary to contact Crytek directly to discuss licensing.
This is huge. The CryENGINE is often cited as being the most powerful engine on the market. Crytek has offered the engine for free to educators before but now individuals can download and use it. Game studios, movie studios, and the army use this thing. Now, indie developers with limited resources now have access to it and have a reasonable way of paying for it. And this is not a gimped version with significant features missing, it’s the whole thing. C++ code access, shaders, script samples, sample source code from Crysis 2, the works. This has the potential to cause huge waves throughout the gaming development community.
