Crytek’s Legal Response to CIG’s Request to Dismiss Star Citizen Case Pulls No Punches

The Crytek vs. CIG legal battle continues as Star Citizen continues to meet their funding goals and gain popularity. In case you weren’t aware, Crytek is suing the Star Citizen creators over copyright issues citing that the studio has failed to uphold their promises regarding CryEngine tech.

According to our previous coverage, Crytek is seeking around $75,000 in direct damages, along with “indirect damages, consequential damages (including lost profits), special damages, cost, fees and expenses incurred by reason of Defendants’ breach of contract and copyright infringement.” The company is also seeking a permanent injunction against Cloud Imperium that would prevent it from using any of Crytek’s work.

Cloud Imperium called the claims “meritless” and asked for a dismissal. Crytek’s response? Pure fire:

Defendant’s Motion seeking dismissal and other relief is without merit. Rather, that Motion is a blatant effort to impose delay and burden Crytek as it seels to vindicate its rights under its contract with Defendants and its copyrights.

The facts here are straightforward: Plaintiff Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) granted Cloud Imperium Games Corp (“CIG”) and Roberts Space Industries Corp (“RSI”) (collectively, “Defendants”) a license to use Crytek’s powerful video game development platform, CryEngine, in the development of Defendant’s video game called “Star Citizen”. Pursuant to that Game License Agreement (the “GLA”), Crytek agreed to provide technical support and know-how to Defendants and licensed CryEngine to Defendants at a discounted rate, in return for certain promises from Defendants.

But after accepting Crytek’s assistance — and after raising record-breaking amounts from video game consumers in a crowdfunding campaign — Defendants began to break their promises to Crytek.

• Defendants promised that they would develop Star Citizenwith CryEngine, not any other development platform. But Defendants now boast that they have breached that promise, and are promoting a competing development platform.
• Defendants promised that they would prominantly display Crytek’s copyright notices and trademarks within Star Citizen and in any marketing materials for Star Citizen. But Defendants have admittedly breached that promise.
• Even though Defendants had licensed Crytek’s technology to develop only one game (Star Citizen) they later separated Star Citizen’s feature “Squadron 42” into a standalone game without a license to use Crytek’s technology in two games
• Defendants promised to provide Crytek with any improvements or bug fixes that they made to CryEngine while developing Star Citizen. Defendants never made a good faith effort to honor that promise.
• Defendants promised that they would maintian the condidentiality of Crytek’s valuable technology, But they published excerpts if Crytek’s source code unilaterally and shared Crytek’s technology with a third-party developer without Crytek’s approval.

Defendants say this action should never have been filed. Indeed, if only they had kept their promises, the action would never have been filed. But now Crytek seeks to enforce its contractual rights and copyrights. Defendants deny any enforceable obligation to Crytek and move the court to dismiss Crytek’s claim entirely. Defendants’ argument simpy do not withstand scrutiny, and certainly cannot meet the demanding standard required to obtain dismissal of Crytek’s claims as a matter of law. The court should deny Defendants’ Motion and permit Crytek to proceed so that it may vindicate its rights.

The full response from Crytek’s lawyers can be seen here, and though we don’t know which way the legal battle will go – it’s obvious that Crytek is willing to put up a fight.