Crytek moves to temporarily dismiss lawsuit against Star Citizen studio

Back in late 2017, we learned that  Crytek was suing Cloud Imperium Games over a licensing dispute. The dispute came into play after CIG switched from using the CryEngine to Amazon’s Lumberyard engine. Crytek claims CIG undersold CryEngine’s impact and used it in two games without permission. CIG has always maintained that it did not violate any licensing terms. Now, Crytek is looking to temporarily dismiss its own lawsuit. 

New court documents made public on Reddit show that Crytek is looking to have its lawsuit against the Star Citizen studio temporarily dismissed until after Squadron 42 comes out. Part of Crytek's complaint against CIG is that the company only had the license to develop one game (Star Citizen) with CryEngine and not two. When Squadron 42 releases, Crytek will be able to point towards two publicly available games as part of its complaint.

The filing asks for a judge to dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice, giving Crytek the freedom to file the lawsuit again at a later date. Initially, the case was set to go to trial on the 13th of October 2020 but apparently, Crytek has received documents indicating that Squadron 42 won't be out by then, so Crytek's lawyers see an October trial as a waste of time.

Crytek's lawsuit hinges on the idea that Cloud Imperium Games only had the license to use CryEngine when developing Star Citizen, not a license to develop both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. If Crytek can convince a jury that CIG violated the license agreement by developing two games, then a substantial amount of money in damages could be on the line.

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KitGuru Says: CIG no longer uses CryEngine and instead uses Amazon Lumberyard (which is based on CryEngine), so this lawsuit is going to remain complicated. If the trial is delayed, then we could still be hearing about this well into next year too, so we are a long way from seeing any resolution. 

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