A Free CryENGINE SDK .. August 2011?

Well, if the hype and rumours are true then in the next few weeks we could be playing around with CryENGINE 3 in all its "full access" glory.

I have blogged about this before, but information has always been scant to say the least.

Crytek planning to release UDK-like version of CryEngine 3

I had completely forgotten about it, but came across An open letter to the Crytek Modding Community:

"In August 2011 we will be launching a free CryENGINE SDK. If you want to use it for fun, like all our previous MOD SDKs it will be completely free of charge, to anyone who wants to play with it! You just register, download the SDK with a personalized license key and you're good to go!"

The letter is from Cevat Yerli the CEO & President of Crytek, and when I say "full access" that seems to be exactly what he is saying:

"This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples, which will allow teams to build complete games from scratch for PC."

So all in all, definately worth the "price" of admission, but it seems it will only be free for non commercial usage, but hints at "rates" or "help" for those wishing to use it to develop commercial ventures:

"If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we'd like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally."

How close this will be to say, Epic's pricing for commercial games developed with the UDK, who knows, it maybe on par or very much higher. I can't see it being less, it would be nice if it was, but ...

Posted in: CryENGINE