Crytek, Cloud Imperium battle over how to end Star Citizen lawsuit

Enlarge / Ships full of lawyers descend on planet Cloud Imperium to deal with the fallout from this trial. (credit: Star Citizen)

Back in late 2017, we told you about Crytek's lawsuit against Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games over an "exclusive" license to use CryEngine in its titles. Now, over two years (and one failed settlement attempt) later, the two companies are fighting over how exactly that lawsuit should be dismissed.

The actual allegations and counter-allegations between Crytek and Cloud Imperium get pretty labyrinthine pretty quickly. But a core part of Crytek's argument is that its original agreement with Cloud Imperium only covered the use of CryEngine in Star Citizen and not the single-player Squadron 42 spin-off (Cloud Imperium disputes this characterization of the original license).

Technically, though, any supposed breach of Crytek's license won't actually take place until and unless Squadron 42 is actually released. And with that game's "staggered development" beta test recently pushed back to the third quarter of 2020, Crytek this month filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss its own lawsuit "without prejudice to re-filing those claims upon the actual release of Squadron 42." In essence, this "dismissal" would just delay the trial from its currently planned June start date to October 13 (if Squadron 42 has indeed come out by then).

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