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Crysis 4 is ‘on hold’ and its director has left as Crytek says it’s laying off 15% of its staff

The company says it has to make the cuts to “remain financially sustainable”

Crysis 4 is ‘on hold’ and its director has left as Crytek says it’s laying off 15% of its staff

Crytek has announced that Crysis 4 is “on hold” as it plans to lay off 15% of its staff (around 60 people) to stay “financially sustainable”.

In a statement posted on its official X account, the company said the layoffs were necessary because of the current state of the industry.

“Like so many of our peers, we aren’t immune to the complex, unfavorable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years,” it wrote.

“It pains us greatly to share today that we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees. The layoffs affect development teams and shared services. This has not been an easy decision to make, as we deeply appreciate the hard work of our talented teams.”

Crytek‘s announcement also reveals that it decided during Q3 last year to put development of Crysis 4 “on hold”, and that it has “been trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown 1896″.

Crytek announced in January 2022 that the fourth Crysis game was in development, and later that year recruited Hitman 3 game director Mattias Engström to lead development on the game.

Engström’s LinkedIn page shows that he left Crytek in November 2024 – presumably after Crysis 4 development was put “on hold” – and rejoined Hitman studio IO Interactive as a principal game designer.

In its statement, the studio added: “While Hunt: Showdown 1896 is still growing, Crytek cannot continue as before and remain financially sustainable.

“Even after ongoing efforts to reduce costs and cut operating expenses, we have determined that layoffs are inevitable to move forward. Crytek will offer affected employees severance packages and career assistance services.”

Stating that it “firmly believes in the future of Crytek”, the company says the plan is to now “continue to expand and evolve Hunt: Showdown 1896 with great content and drive our strategy for our engine CryEngine”.