At a short Crytek press briefing in San Francisco today, CryEngine creative director Frank Vitz made big announcements regarding the high-end engine.
Most notably, he said CryEngine is ditching its current business model and instead going strictly “pay what you want.”
“If you can’t afford to give us anything, that’s okay,” Vitz said. He noted there will be no royalties taken or charges for additional services, and users will have access to the full engine and the source code.
It’s simply a straightforward pay-what-you-want model, presumably a long-term play put in place to get maximum reach as engine companies strive to become platform companies as well.
Vitz also announced CryEngine V (“CryEngine Five”), which has been optimized for virtual reality development. The new version of CryEngine has DX12 support, as well as support for all major VR HMDs, volumetric cloud system optimized for VR, FMOD support, C# support and other features.
The company also announced a new CryEngine indie development fund, which is starting at $1 million, with a potential to grow.
CryEngine was also recently in the news after Amazon announced its own Lumberyard game engine, which is based on CryEngine.