Crytek releases Cryengine 5.5 alongside new royalties model

Developers using Cryengine may notice a new license agreement which details changes to the engine’s monetisation scheme. No longer will Cryengine be ‘pay what you want’, but will now ask creators to pay five per cent of revenue gained from games made using the technology. These fees begin as soon as a project makes at least $5000.

The new royalty scheme applies to anyone currently creating a game using Cryengine, though you can seek exemption as long as you don’t update to the latest version, 5.5. This new update contains a huge number of improvements, all of which Crytek detailed at GDC and on its official blog. It includes over 260 fixes and improvements, including a new ten-chapter ‘getting started’ course, easy migration of projects from Unity, along with UI and UX improvements in the Sandbox and elsewhere.

You can grab the preview version of Cryengine 5.5 from the engine’s launcher, and the full patch notes can be seen in Crytek’s online documentation. The video below shows the game you’ll be making in the new ‘getting started’ course, as new Cryengine developers are walked through making a Flappy Bird clone. Beneath that, you’ll find another video that showcases the work created by developers in Crytek in the recent past.