CIG both responded to Crytek’s lawsuit and published the Game License Agreement they signed with Crytek in order to diminish and lessen the impact of the lawsuit that was filed against Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries regarding Star Citizen.
Reddit user Liudeius posted up links to Cloud Imperium Game’s rebuttal, along with the full GLA signed between Crytek and CIG. You can view the GLA document over on Google Drive. CIG’s response is also available over on Google Drive.
The one thing most news sites are reporting on is that CIG has made it known that in Crytek’s original claims, they never provided the Game License Agreement so the courts could view it for themselves. Not only did CIG provide the GLA but also went through each section to point out where they did not breach the contract.
As pointed out in the contract and CIG’s rebuttal, they had permission to make two games based on CryEngine, Star Citizen and Squadron 42. They also highlight how nothing in the agreement restricts them exclusively to the CryEngine – they later had to switch over Amazon’s Lumberyard, which is based on the CryEngine in order to make use of the networking properties to build out the infrastructure for the MMO components.
In the rebuttal from CIG, they state that the courts should dismiss the case because it’s “immaterial”, “impertinent” and “scandalous. The summary reads…
The Court should strike the Offending Allegations (the statements in bold italics above) on the grounds that they are “immaterial,” “impertinent” and “scandalous” within the meaning of Federal Rule 12(f). The Offending Allegations are “immaterial” because they have “no essential or important relationship” to Crytek’s claim for breach of the GLA or infringement of the Engine. See Fantasy, 984 F.2d at 1527. Similarly, the statements are “impertinent” because they do not pertain, and are not necessary to, any of
the issues raised by Crytek’s claims for breach of contract or copyright infringement. Id. Finally, the statements are “scandalous” because they “cast a cruelly derogatory light” on Mr. Freyermuth (a co-founder of CIG) and Mr. Jones (an employee of CIG) without any justification.”
There are a few areas where CIG doesn’t necessarily have an answer for a few of Crytek’s claims, such as the one about Bugsmashers exposing Crytek’s source code to the public, or CIG sharing CryEngine source code with FaceWare.
In fact, the rebuttal doesn’t even mention FaceWare, which could mean that maybe they don’t have an answer because it’s true? Otherwise, they could have said that the only code they shared with FaceWare was based on Lumberyard and not the CryEngine version they signed a license for. The Bugsmashers element is a little more into the weeds, but the intent of the Bugsmashers program is to show backers how they’re crushing bugs in real-time to let the community know what’s being fixed and how.
Roberts Space Industries might have to end up making Bugsmashers unlisted and only share the links in a backers-only thread as a compromise, but I doubt it’ll be too much of a problem.
It will be interesting to see how Crytek responds to Cloud Imperium Games’ statements.
