Despite piracy, Crysis was still profitable

Posted Aug 19th 2008 12:30PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, FPS

We have heard Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli complain more than once about the rampant piracy that occured after the release of their first person shooter Crysis last fall. In fact Yerli claimed at one point that just one legit copy of the game was sold for every 20 copies that were pirated.

Well it appears than even all that illegal downloading of Crysis wasn't enough to totally sink the ship at Crytek. IGN reports that during a speech this week at the Games Convention Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany, Yerli stated that Crysis was actually profitable, saying, "if it wasn't profitable I wouldn't be able to stand here." The actual cost of develping the game was 15 million Euros (about $22 million). The second game in the series, Crysis Warhead, is due out in mid-September.

Tags: crysis, crysis-warhead, crytek

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Glad to hear they were profitable despite the negative public perception. I had a blast with Crysis and can't wait for Warhead.

...bysmittyPosted at 1:11PM on Aug 19th 2008 by bysmitty

That's quite a low budget actually. A lot of multiplats are about $50 mil.Posted at 3:15PM on Aug 19th 2008 by Haggard

Doesn't mean Crysis Warhead will make money.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I seriously doubt I'll buy this Crysis since I already paid for the beta, the original Crysis.

Crytek released Crysis way before it was ready and pulled anchor almost immediately after it was released. The MP was a bust; worst in-game hacks since the original Diablo (Nothing like 30 nukes going off in 20 seconds to ruin a game). I never finished the 3rd act of SP because of crashes on an otherwise rock-solid PC. From the forums it sounds like it was wash anyway. The patches came so slow that most of the community left, leaving the hackers/script kiddies. Too bad, the game had a lot of promise too.

Companies don't seem to care about their reputations, thinking the next game will pull people back regardless. Blizzard gets it; most companies don't. Posted at 9:34AM on Aug 30th 2008 by seforest