The studio behind the beautiful and ground-breaking Crysis and original Far Cry games, Crytek, has made its CryEngine game engine available to anyone to develop games for a small monthly subscription fee. CryEngine has long been one of the most sophisticated and best looking engines around, and its an up-to-date version you can access too.

There are three subscription tiers on offer: one month costs $9.90 (R103.37), three months goes for $9 a month (R93.97) or you can get six months for the discounted rate of just $8.33 (R86.97) a month. Subscribers get access to the latest builds of the engine as they’re released, along with support from CryTek by way of documentation, demo levels and other bits and bobs that will help aspiring game-makers get to grips with the technology.

Venturebeat says the version of the engine that’s on sale (3.6.2) is the same one used to create Ryse: Son of Rome for the Xbox One, a very recent and incredibly pretty-looking game, so developers will have access to all the technical bells and whistles needed to make a triple-A videogame. Which is incredibly impressive for such an affordable rate.

And absolutely anyone can buy it. All you need is a Steam account and a desire to make games, and you too can some day be pumping out winners like State of Decay, Mechwarrior Online or the next Crysis – all of which use CryEngine – once you’ve acquired the necessary skills to put the engine to good use.

No royalties

Crytek has even scrapped its royalty programme. That means that if you produce a game which sells using the CryEngine, you don’t have to pay any extra fees.

The rental programme was first announced back in March at the Game Developer’s Conference. Venturebeat reports that the company aims to “broaden PC game development by making the high-end 3D game technology available to the masses of developers for a subscription fee”, something an affordable, professional-level game engine will certainly facilitate.

Up to now, making a game has either required a lot of investment – we’re talking millions here – to develop your own technology on which to build it, or hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees if you base it on someone else’s game engine. At barely a hundred rand a month, that barrier to entry is no longer there.

With over five million people logging into Steam every day and a subscriber base of over 75 million gamers worldwide, Steam “is a great place to reach new customers” according to Crytek’s business development director,  Carl Jones.

So, budding South African developers, if you have any game-making talents and you’re interested in building your dream game with a cutting-edge game engine, it’s now more affordable than ever to get started.

[Source – Venturebeat, Image – Steampowered.com]