Crytek’s financial woes hardly surprise us anymore but it continues to pop up in the news every now and then for questionable management practices. The studio’s latest victims are its Shanghai-based employees, who’ve reportedly been unpaid since September 2016.
The issue was highlighted by industry insider and Niko Partners analyst, Daniel Ahmad (ZhugeEX on Twitter), who first noted last December that Crytek’s Shanghai studio will remain open to work on VR projects. Yesterday, he reported that employees continued to work without pay with the promise of receiving their salaries eventually, but the company failed to pay them and shut down as it couldn’t even afford rent.
“Crytek Shanghai looked to go independent but that seems to have fallen through too,” said Ahmad. “So now there are lots of people without a job and they were all messed around and promised pay they never got.”
Ahmad also shared the following image that seems to be a letter to employees addressing the situation:
In response to Ahmad’s tweet, one user pointed towards a Reddit thread that was created by a Shanghai employee last month but largely went unnoticed. The poster, esd3mon, said that the team was kicked out by the landlord and blamed Crytek for “destroying lives.”
The company has yet to respond.
[Source: Daniel Ahmad (Twitter)]
