Crytek has opened up its high-end game engine by uploading the CryEngine source code to Github. 

The German studio says it chose to release CryEngine through Github to make it easier for users to stay up to date with new releases, “as as merging code branches is an area where Git excels.”

A recent Crytek blog post from senior systems engineer David Kaye suggests the company had been planning the move for some time. 

"In the past, public CryEngine releases came with source code in a zip file included in the build," explains Kaye.

"While this allowed users to customize systems as they saw fit […] to see the difference in a set of files between one release and the next, both archives needed to be extracted and compared. 

"Git makes this a lot easier, and since Git is decentralized, it can also be used just as effectively with no network connection."

Full instructions on how to access and work with CryEngine can be found on Github, although it's worth remembering that the source code is still governed by the CryEngine license.