Report: Homefront Designer Resigns From Crytek UK

[Steven Bogos]

Report: Homefront Designer Resigns From Crytek UK

The news coming out of Crytek UK just goes from bad to worse.

Earlier in the year, we heard a bit about Crytek's UK office facing some financial troubles, with reports coming in that employees weren't being Kotaku sources [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/135724-Report-Crytek-Staffers-Havent-Been-Properly-Paid-Since-April], Homefront: The Revolution game director Hasit Zala resigned from his position at Crytek UK this week.

"It creates a weird scenario as there are now no upper management," said a person connected to Crytek UK. "Everything is just continuing on a downwards spiral." Crytek UK development manager Ben Harris also left the studio this month, and there are reports that many more employees have quit the company, or are at least actively searching for new jobs.

Zala was also franchise director for the free-to-play shooter Warface. Crytek's UK studio is responsible for developing Homefront: The Revolution, the open-world sequel to 2011's Homefront that debuted just before E3 earlier this year.

There's certainly a lot of stuff going on over at Crytek, and from the pieces we've been able to gather, it's not adding up to a particularly pretty picture. We've reached out to Crytek and Homefront: The Revolution publisher Deep Silver for comment on the situation but have yet to receive a response.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/sources-crytek-still-facing-issues-as-homefront-direct-1603582673]

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[Dr.Awkward]

At this point, you've got to ask if Homefront is cursed. Look at what happened to the last developer that worked on that game - Somewhere there's a nice in-depth article about its downward spiral and how THQ got way too involved with development, utterly making the game into something panned both by critics and players. Eventually, it just wasn't the developer caved in, but also THQ.

Now look at what's happening with Crytek - After two games (or, at least, one game and one attempt at a continuation), it kinda makes you wonder if maybe it was better off left alone and forgotten somewhere...

 

[Grabehn]

I don't think anyone is surprised about this though, Crytek's been doing poorly for a while.

I never like when studios have to shut down, but the only game I liked from them was the original Crysis. None of the sequels got near that point where I said "I HAVE to play this".

 

[Squilookle]

*sigh*

Why couldn't they have just let them make the next damn Timesplitters already?

 

[Michael Legault]

At this point, you've got to ask if Homefront is cursed. Look at what happened to the last developer that worked on that game - Somewhere there's a nice in-depth article about its downward spiral and how THQ got way too involved with development, utterly making the game into something panned both by critics and players. Eventually, it just wasn't the developer caved in, but also THQ.

Now look at what's happening with Crytek - After two games (or, at least, one game and one attempt at a continuation), it kinda makes you wonder if maybe it was better off left alone and forgotten somewhere...

meh... The developer who did homefront before them also made Dark Sector, which was terrible. The guy used a chakram type weapon and they called it a "glaive". Then they did the multiplayer for bioshock 2. It's kinda sad but that company is headed by the original creator of the unreal engine, though he does not own the rights to it. But last I checked they still exist, I know someone who had a job interview there as a cook, though that was a few months back now...

 

[Dragonlayer]

Well that sucks, since I was apparently one of the three people who enjoyed Homefront and was looking forward to the sequel.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's a bit hard to feel sorry for the company that doesn't listen to fan feedback AT ALL and calls the majority of PC gamers pirates, but then makes a dumbed down sequel for consoles that sells less on 3 systems than their PC exclusive.

So, cry me a river Crytek. You've been warned and you didn't listen.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Now look at what's happening with Crytek - After two games (or, at least, one game and one attempt at a continuation), it kinda makes you wonder if maybe it was better off left alone and forgotten somewhere...

You're putting much too much emphasis on Homefront in the equation.

THQ was in $250 million(!!!) of debt when it folded, in the year before that it had had the multiple failures of Red Faction, MX vs ATV and it lost the UFC franchise to EA. Most of all it had Udraw, of which THQ was left holding 1.4million unsold tablets by the end of the 2011-12 financial year, that was most (if not almost all) of the Udraw tablet's production run and it cost THQ in the region of $100 million.

Homefront was a raging success compared to most of THQ's last two years, even measured against Metro 2033 and Saints Row it did fine.

As for Crytek, well, first they let Ubisoft walk away with the Far Cry name and V1 of the CryEngine (mistake 1), then they got into bed with EA (mistake 2), then they didn't charge enough for games they licensed out the CryEngine v2/3 on (mistake 3), then they began buying up defunct studios and licenses and funded it through loans (mistake 4) and then they decided to get into the Free to Play market at least two years two late and in direct competition with TF2 (mistakes 5 through infinity). Crytek is a small independant developer that makes reasonably succesful PC FPS games, but they've tried to turn themselves into proto-Activision over night and it's not working out (surprise!).

Homefront is in no way cursed, it's just a thing that's been sat in the background while people who are supposedly clever made spectacularly dumb decisions.

 

[Vivi22]

You're putting much too much emphasis on Homefront in the equation.

THQ was in $250 million(!!!) of debt when it folded, in the year before that it had had the multiple failures of Red Faction, MX vs ATV and it lost the UFC franchise to EA. Most of all it had Udraw, of which THQ was left holding 1.4million unsold tablets by the end of the 2011-12 financial year, that was most (if not almost all) of the Udraw tablet's production run and it cost THQ in the region of $100 million.

Homefront was a raging success compared to most of THQ's last two years, even measured against Metro 2033 and Saints Row it did fine.

Pretty much this. If any one thing killed THQ, it was Udraw by a long shot. Homefront was a phenomenal success relative to what that thing cost them.

then they didn't charge enough for games they licensed out the CryEngine v2/3 on (mistake 3)

To be fair, when version 2 of your engine is known for being a PC crushing power house that almost no one could run effectively, and you're so far behind Epic in the engine licensing business that you almost don't even count as a real competitor, it's hard to command top dollar for your engine. That said, I have no idea what they did charge and how it compares to the Unreal Engine costs, but they certainly couldn't have commanded Unreal Engine money for the CryEngine.

 

[insanelich]

At this point, you've got to ask if Homefront is cursed. Look at what happened to the last developer that worked on that game - Somewhere there's a nice in-depth article about its downward spiral and how THQ got way too involved with development, utterly making the game into something panned both by critics and players. Eventually, it just wasn't the developer caved in, but also THQ.

Now look at what's happening with Crytek - After two games (or, at least, one game and one attempt at a continuation), it kinda makes you wonder if maybe it was better off left alone and forgotten somewhere...

meh... The developer who did homefront before them also made Dark Sector, which was terrible. The guy used a chakram type weapon and they called it a "glaive". Then they did the multiplayer for bioshock 2. It's kinda sad but that company is headed by the original creator of the unreal engine, though he does not own the rights to it. But last I checked they still exist, I know someone who had a job interview there as a cook, though that was a few months back now...

You're wrong.

The developer doing multiplayer for Bioshock 2 and Dark Sector is Digital Extremes, now making Warframe. They're not half bad.

The original Homefront developer was Kaos Studios. They hired Digital Extremes for some extra tech work.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

It's a bit hard to feel sorry for the company that doesn't listen to fan feedback AT ALL and calls the majority of PC gamers pirates, but then makes a dumbed down sequel for consoles that sells less on 3 systems than their PC exclusive.

So, cry me a river Crytek. You've been warned and you didn't listen.

crying a river, achieved with cry engine?


i still feel bad for them, but i think its ship is going to sink, hard

 

[Callate]

At this point, you've got to ask if Homefront is cursed.

I was kind of thinking the same thing myself.

The initial trailer looked pretty interesting- not to say that such trailers typcially have bugger-all to do with the gameplay of the games they're representing.