Crytek Employees Go Six Months Without Pay?

German-Based game’s development company Crytek has been in the business since 1999, creating some truly incredible games, such as Far Cry, Crisis and more. Their CryEngine game engine is loved by the gaming community and has always proven extremely capable of pushing seriously impressive graphics on any system. Over the years they’ve managed to establish six studios around the world and a sizeable workforce too.

However, it’s rumoured that not all is well at Crytek, and you could argue over the world “again” or “still” being added to that statement. The company was already in serious financial trouble back in 2014, where they held back payment for employees for quite some time in the hope they would get further investments to help balance their books, and they did. Although you could argue they took a huge risk and got lucky.

Now it seems the same could be happening again, with a developer taking to reddit to cry for help after being ignored by managers within Crytek for months.

Crytek hasn’t paid me (or my coworkers) for almost 6 months now. HELP!

I’m not sure where else to turn at this point. This has happened in the past a few times, but never for this long. Management never gives anyone a heads up, and it isn’t clear to me if they are getting paid or even informed from the owners.

The last time this happened we were told it would be the last time and yet it is happening again. Many of my co-workers moved from out of the country to work here and are unable to leave because they cannot afford to get back home due to their wages being withheld for so long.

People are afraid to speak out because we are continuously told “Thank you for your continued efforts through this difficult time” and “You don’t understand because you don’t see the whole picture like we do— wages are coming soon.”

The brothers had a meeting a few months ago and assured everyone that the issue was finally fixed and there should be no more problems. That is not the case. People are still working without pay. This isn’t just here in Germany, this is in all of our offices as far as I can tell.

Upper management refuses to speak to any of us and our managers have no answers. We have never been apologized to, and they refuse to talk to us.

I am posting on Reddit as a last resort. What are our options legally speaking? Is there anything we can do to fight this?

This does sound a lot like a repeat of the incidents from a few years ago, and could mean that Crytek is trying to silence or simply ignore their staff to cover that they’re in breach of contract with their smaller studios. It’s unclear if the dev is employed or contracted out by Crytek, but it’s sure to raise concern either way with those who are currently invested in the studio.