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Over the weekend, rumours began to abound that Crytek were once again facing some financial troubles after a post that was posted on both Reddit and Imgur by the same author talked about how employees across all studios were not being paid, how this had been going on for months and even that one studio was on the block for selling off. Other sources came forward around the same time to media outlets, saying pretty much the same thing.
Now one ex-employee who recently quit has launched his own crowdfunding campaign to raise legal fees. He plans to sue Crytek for the unpaid wages he and others are owed. Ludvig Lindqvist is an FX artist who once worked at Crytek’s main German studio in Frankfurt from March 2015 until last week when he quit after two months of waiting to be paid for his work. In his GoFundMe campaign, Lindqvist has said that “Crytek has failed to pay salaries on time starting May 2016,” and provided screencaps of his last four salary statements to show proof of payments being delayed or missed entirely.
The funding goal of his campaign is about €20,000, and he has said that any excess he raises will go towards other Crytek or former Crytek employees who wish to emulate his example is suing the Germany studio, or if there aren’t any will go towards gaming-related charitable causes such as Special Effect and Able Gamers.
There are more rumours now that a lot more employees than just Lindqvist have quit their positions at Crytek recently, and so far there has been no public statement from the studio themselves telling their side of the story. Whatever is actually going on with Crytek, all the evidence so far does not suggest a good ending to this entire story.
It’s probably happened to all of us. We tune in to a stream on Twitch wanting to just relax and watch some good gameplay, a major tournament or even some cooking. And then, invariably our eyes stray to the chat. Yes, Twitch chat. That hotbed of thoughtful, fair and equitable destruction.
Or, as Totalbiscuit once described it: eye cancer.
While I won’t characterize ALL Twitch chats as wretched cesspools filled with some of the worst vitriol I have ever seen spew from a human’s mouth, many of them are. Just watch any major eSports tournament, such as DOTA2’s International or the Smite World Championships. Racism, sexism, hate speech. It’s all there. And it would seem Twitch wants to do something about it, because they have just announced a new feature called “AutoMod”.
Streamers can toggle AutoMod in their settings page. If the service works as advertised it will allow streamers to set up filters for both terrible words and the little “l33t” speak version speople use to get around them.
According to Twitch:
AutoMod is a unique moderation tool that does more than filter inappropriate chat. When a user sends a message that AutoMod flags as potentially inappropriate, the message is held in a publishing queue awaiting moderator approval. AutoMod also enables broadcasters to adjust the degree of filtering in the event they are more or less conservative about the type of dialogue they want to see in their chat. Beyond identifying inappropriate words and phrases, AutoMod can detect potentially inappropriate strings of emotes and other characters or symbols that others could use to evade filtering.
This is a potentially big deal, as a large portion of the Twitch viewing audience probably aren’t terrible people. But they get drowned out by the vocal minority that thrive on spewing hate. My prime concern though is this: Aside from when I’m actually the one streaming or acting as a moderator, I habitually hide Twitch chat for the simple reason that I don’t want to look at it. I imagine I’m not alone in this. And I’m not sure that this tool, even if it works 100% as advertised will be enough to change that for many people.
What do you think? Will this tool get you to look at Twitch chat again? Or do you think people will find a way to circumvent it in short order?
Crytek has faced some financial trouble in the past, having had to sell off their UK studio to Deep Silver in 2014. However, as far as we knew they were doing alright right now. Only over the weekend a few posts emerged that suggested that maybe things were once again going wrong behind the scenes.
The posts, duplicated on both Reddit and Imgur, are supposedly written by an author who claims to be an employee at the main Crytek studio in Germany. In it they write that Crytek hasn’t paid them or their co-workers for almost six months, and that as far as they can tell the problem is not just limited to the German studio. “This isn’t just here in Germany, this is in all of our offices as far as I can tell.”
There has also been a report by Let’s Play Video Games into this. Sources have apparently come forward to them and have been “privately verified” by LPVG as legitimate. Crytek’s Black Sea studio in Bulgaria has not been paid wages in three months, and may even be up for sale with a “big name” in talks to purchase it.
It’s been suggested that the reason is due to mismanagement and other things leading to Crytek not making a great profit for a while. A lot of projects have been cancelled it seems and Crytek have failed to capitalise on the popular IPs they do have, like TimeSplitters and Crysis according to sources. They also blame pushes into VR (Robinson: The Journey, The Climb) that were never likely to turn a profit in the first place, and an overcommitment to free-to-play (Warface).
Management seems to be keeping quiet, although it is possible that they themselves aren’t being given the full picture by their higher-ups either.
“Management never gives anyone a heads up, and it isn’t clear to me if they are getting paid or even informed from the owners.” writes the author of the Reddit/Imgur post about the managers at the studio. He also wrote that some of his co-workers had moved to Germany from other countries to work there and were now unable to get back home due to having their wages withheld for so long.
Whatever is going on, it sounds like there’s once again trouble afoot for Crytek. We’ll just have to see how this situation develops.
After a time wondering when the rota of capturable Pokemon would be updated, and Niantic hinting at it – it’s finally happened. Niantic have confirmed that new monsters are now available in the game, including a number of Baby Pokemon and others taken from the 2nd Gen of Pokemon. That’s Gold and Silver (and Crystal) in case you need a refresher.
While there’s been no specific number revealed, Niantic have said that these new ‘mon will only be available through eggs you can acquire from pokestops and then hatch out. A trailer has been put out that does reveal a few, including Togepi and Pichu as now being available.
As well, to celebrate the time of year from now until December 29th you can get a special edition of Pikachu in the game. Why is this one special? It wears a festive holiday hat.
Other features have also recently been introduced in a bid to lure back players who have maybe drifted off from the game. Sprint stores are now gyms and pokestops, there’s a pokemon-themed Starbucks drink, limited-time in-game events are now a thing, and most importantly (according to my friends who still play) the location tracker is back.
It’s time for the weekly article on what is new in the world of Kickstarter Gaming campaigns, as well as your update on how what we’ve looked at before it doing. Hope you’re ready for some new interesting things to check out.
Firstly we’ll look back at a few of the previously covered campaigns to see how they’re doing. There’s not too many at a point worth catching up on, but what is there is in the majority good news.
Space Jammers have pulled back a lot to reach their full funding figure and get a fully completed campaign, with keys coming in the new year to backers. Two other campaigns have good news to report too, with Jupiter Hell having reached its target comfortably with only 24 hours left to go and Bitdude already four-fifths of the way to its (small) goal with 18 more days to make up the rest – which amounts to just £25.
However, as always there is some bad news and Return to Earth has only 44 hours to go on its campaign and has made under half its end goal right now. While it doesn’t look likely that it’ll get funded, I have been wrong about games in the past so watch this space next week for update. Berghain is also still unavailable due to intellectual dispute at time of writing.
First up we have this local co-op shooter for up to 4 players.
Never Not Shooting is a twin-stick arcade style shooter game that focuses on a team of players equipped themselves with a customisable set of weapons and then fighting together against procedurally generated waves of enemies. Together you are trying to survive as long as possible and at the same time rack up the highest score for the global leaderboards. The viewpoint is a top-down one and co-operation is key. A good ones for gatherings of friends for some couch co-op play.
Never Not Shooting has a $7,500 goal with 23 days remaining, it has made $856 so far.
Next we have a 2D action platformer game with two playable characters and a time limit.
Set in a world where the Sun and Moon are siblings, Twin Flames lets you control one of the two siblings as you climb a tower to meet and do battle with your sibling for control of the day-night cycle. The game has some roguelike elements to it in that there’s a lot of weapons, artifacts, spells and more to randomly find and collect to upgrade your character for their journey up the tower and for that final battle at the top. However, take too long to climb and you will lose all your powers, automatically handing the other sibling the win.
Twin Flames has made MX$59,286 of it’s MX$200,000 goal. It has 7 days to go.
I included this one because of other similar games that have been popular in the past, and frankly it’s just pure Youtuber bait – I love it.
Left For Dad is a game for many players, one playing the Dad who needs to drive his car through the corridors and rooms of the school to pick up his children (yes, really), and the rest playing the Children who need to avoid Dad and break as much stuff as possible to meet a damage total and win. The Dad player needs to learn how to move around the building but is fast, while the Children are smaller and have pick ups that can hinder the Dad player’s progress for a while.
Left For Dad has a goal of CA$7,777 of which it has yet to make any. It still has 29 days to go.
Finally we have a classic action RPG set in a future full of turmoil.
Legend of Decay’s world is a post-apocalypse one inspired by Norse myths, in which a chain reaction started by a couple of plant species dying ended up bringing almost everything to an end. Now the world is filled with wastelands, deserts of sand and mud, deep forests and huge mega cities; all of which you will find yourself travelling through on your way through the story. The developers have said that if the campaign fails, they still plan to make and release the game – just with some delays and a little less content.
Legend of Decay’s target is CHF 50,000 and it has 29 days to go. It has made CHF 28.00 so far.
