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Comment by synicalx | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr if you can't be bothered reading through all the legal fidgey widgey - Crytek is claiming CIG breached their contract by doing the following:

- Publishing Squadron 42 as a seperate game (licence was only for one game, Star Citizen)

- CIG fiddled with/remove Crytek's branding in loading screens etc (they weren't supposed to)

- Cryengine was not exclusively used for Star Citizen (apparently it also leverages Lumberyard)

- CIG did not provide bug fixes and optimisations for Cryengine (they were supposed to)

- CIG disclosed Cryengine "secrets" without permission via online videos, and also via collaboration with a third party

Not sure on the amount, the only dollar figure quoted is 'in excess of $75,000'. Not sure if that means $76,000 or $1mil though - IANAL!

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I assume the 'in excess of $75,000' figure is in there to ensure that a Federal court has jurisdiction over the action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amount_in_controversy

Ah that would make sense! Theoretically then, I suppose this could actually be quite a big chunk of cash in question - especially with all the allusions to how much money CIG raised for Star Citizen.

Interesting to note that Lumberyard is a licensed Cryengine fork.

Given that CIG has relicensed under Lumberyard, is it possible that Crytek has a case here? I guess it depends on the contract, but I can't really imagine that CGI locked themselves into a contract to only ever use CryEngine for Star Citizen - wouldn't there have to be a specific clause that gives the dollar amount due in such a case that Star Citizen is either cancelled or switched to a different engine?

This wasn't a simple "we used this engine" type of deal- Crytek invested a lot in the kickstarter by supplying expertise and helping to build demos, and in return for that they promised to use the engine. This was meant to help promote Crytek as well, and that is why they invested in it.

Specifically-

> In that Agreement, Defendants promised, among other things, (i) to use the CryEngine game development platform exclusively and to promote that platform within the video game, (ii) to collaborate with Crytek on CryEngine development, and (iii) to take a number of steps to ensure that Crytek's intellectual property was protected.

My point is that, since the two are completely separate legal parties, shouldn't such contracts explicitely define what happens if a condition is not met? IANAL, but the way I see contracts, they can never really force people to do anything, instead it's a way to define opportunity costs as clearly as possible so there aren't any uncertainties on the table. It's like SLAs. Well, sure, you can guarantee me 5 nines or whatever - but if it's not defined what you owe me in case you don't make it, that guarantee is worthless to me because then all I can do is suing you and let a judge decide what's to happen after tons of legal expenses.

That's what I meant with my assumption that there should be some clear consequences already defined in the contract.

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