Last week, reports surfaced that Crytek is undergoing major layoffs, and the next chapter of the Crysis franchise now looks decidedly uncertain. This bleak update also drew additional attention on this week’s DF Direct, coming right after the team’s in-depth walkthrough of Sony’s State of Play presentation the day before. It’s an important situation, and I wanted to unpack it more thoroughly here as the Direct airs.
After all, Crysis is something of a cornerstone for us at Digital Foundry. Over the years, the series has been known for adopting graphics breakthroughs early—developments that then went on to influence whole eras of PC and console gaming. Think of techniques like screen-space ambient occlusion, sub-surface scattering, and ray-marched volumetric lighting. Of course, there’s plenty more to say about how trailblazing the first game was—and Alex does exactly that.
Crysis 3 and its Remastered edition have been staples of the DF benchmark lineup for both CPU and GPU testing for ages. Personally, I still associate a few moments—like the “Highly Explosive Materials” train sequence and the exchange between Prophet and Psycho early on in Welcome to the Jungle—with countless benchmark runs. With that history in mind, Crysis 4 was eagerly expected by the entire team when it was announced back in 2022, particularly in an industry where proprietary engine work is under pressure from the widespread dominance of Unreal Engine.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:11 News 1: State of Play: Tides of Annihilation
- 0:09:37 MindsEye
- 0:16:38 Days Gone Remastered
- 0:22:28 Saros
- 0:29:12 Dreams of Another
- 0:36:59 Lost Soul Aside
- 0:41:39 Other games: Borderlands 4, Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Onimusha, Midnight Walk
- 0:59:34 State of Play – The Verdict
- 1:06:43 News 2: Crysis 4 placed “on hold” as Crytek lays off staff
- 1:16:24 News 3: Assassin’s Creed Shadows PC specifications disclosed
- 1:36:32 News 4: Astro Bot receives PS5 Pro upgrade
- 1:42:59 Supporter Q1: After three months, what is your assessment of the PS5 Pro and PSSR?
- 1:52:53 Supporter Q2: Why don’t more developers utilize CryEngine?
- 1:59:40 Supporter Q3: Will Nvidia restrict new AI features to their latest hardware?
- 2:09:17 Supporter Q4: Does RTX Mega Geometry remove the necessity for proxy geometry for RT?
- 2:15:17 Supporter Q5: Could Oliver elaborate on some of the recent cutting-edge AI technologies?
- 2:26:52 Supporter Q6: How much should you invest in a GPU for a satisfactory experience?
At this point, the idea of a new mainline Crysis entry feels farther away than ever. Crytek’s layoffs are wide-ranging, affecting roughly 60 people—about 15 percent of the company’s workforce—and they follow the departure of Crysis 4 director Mattias Engström in November of last year, after which he returned to Hitman creator IO Interactive. Beyond the immediate hit to the developers involved, it’s difficult to imagine the existing Crysis 4 effort restarting anytime soon in light of these events. Instead, the studio’s remaining team has shifted its attention toward the live service extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown 1896, as Crytek works to become “financially viable“.
As Alex notes during the Direct, Crytek has run into obstacles going back to Crysis 2, even with the engine’s relative popularity and the fairly modest results achieved by its releases. The engine’s (mostly undeserved) reputation for weak performance limited its uptake among console teams, and today CryEngine is far less common than it used to be—despite its role as the underlying base for the recently launched Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The company’s attempts across multiple studios and VR releases don’t appear to have produced the returns that decision-makers were hoping for, and it’s still unclear whether the recent Crysis remasters actually covered their costs. Still, Crytek was named the largest single game developer in Germany as recently as mid-2024.
It’s clear that while Crysis 4 might have offered the studio a badly needed lift, major game releases are getting increasingly expensive and time-consuming to bring together—especially when you also need to deliver the next major evolution of your own in-house engine to match the expectations tied to a modern, high-end PC release. For Crysis specifically, the pressure of expectation can feel comparable to what Half-Life draws from longtime PC fans, so it’s hardly surprising that development on Crysis 4 has only been prolonged at best.
Looking ahead, the best-case hope might be that the Crysis 4 team is tasked with producing a more modest Crysis spin-off—one that can make use of whatever technologies and assets were already in development, without carrying the heightened expectations that come with a numbered sequel. If that proves to be successful—and perhaps helps bring CryEngine back into the spotlight with studios that aren’t looking to default to Unreal—that outcome could be enough to restart Crysis 4 work.
There’s also the possibility that Crytek itself could be folded into a bigger company if its finances don’t improve. A Tencent purchase was discussed in 2021, though it never came to pass. Even so, there are several other organizations that would likely be eager to acquire the studio’s experienced developers, its engine, and other technical capabilities. In that scenario, the prospect of outside funding and reduced control could be preferable to the alternative of Crytek shutting down entirely.
No matter what ultimately happens to Crytek and Crysis 4, this development adds to the growing sense that the gaming industry is in a tense and changing phase. Success stories like Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, and even Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that great games can be made at a range of scales—but it increasingly feels as though the traditional “triple-A” approach is losing momentum. That might be a positive shift if it results in a healthier, more sustainable ecosystem and gives Crytek a route forward. Even so, losing a full-scale Crysis 4 would still be hard to accept.