Well, as some of you may know, CryEngine-As-A-Service has officially been announced today. After 2 months of dead-silence since the first announcement of CEAAS, many of us on CryDev.net had our excitement come to painfully grinding halt, basically, they took their SDK and slapped a price tag on it, with no source code. Add to that CryEngine’s abysmal documentation, and their engine is basically unusable. So, I want thank the Epic and the Unreal Team, for making Unreal Engine affordable, usable!
I read your comments on CryDev and yes your are right 
Crytek failed this time!
i really liked the cryengine but the new “Version” is really just the old version with a price tag on it… ok they included EAAS but thats all so far i know…
The funny thing is, the community gave them many good suggestion like fbx support etc… but it seems crytek gives a shi**** about the community suggestions…
It’s just a shame, really.
In the 2 years FreeSDK existed, they have been ignoring the community completely, keeping complete silence. And compare the amount of games in UDK with the ammount of games in FreeSDK. A personal promising project of mine hit a wall brutally with freesdk, ending up with the separation of the team, i feel bad for all the guys that will fall for it, if you stop paying, you lose access to the engine, and it also has allways online DRM.
Competition is good. It inspired companies to improve to stay relevant. Maybe it helps Epic speed up on improving on UE4 few shortcomings? And I’m sure Epic (and Unity) are a big pressure on Crytek. In the end, we all stand to gain. Meanwhile, it makes for some exciting times.
My personal take on it? For my needs, UE4 is godsend. No need to look over the fence. Can it be improved? Sure, and I’m sure it is, and will keep improving.
That being said, Crytek should REALLY look for ways to improve on their asset importing workflow. Not everyone has/wants/needs/likes Maya or 3dsmax or photoshop, for that matter.
A few years ago when poking around and wanting to make a game, I was looking at engines. Unity was out because of the (to me) massive initial cash output. Then it was down to Cryengine or udk. Realizing I was an complete noob I would need massive support tutorials. That being my deciding factor, a few google and youtube searches showed me that I (again personally) was able to find much more information on how to use udk.
I am thrilled to see Epic being even more open and generous than before. Its an incentive, I want to make a kick *** game so, 1) I get paid. 2) epic gets some cash out of an amazing product and a continuing legacy of win.
Yeah, I got perma-banned for flipping on RayFan9876. I figured I would be, but I figured I had nothing to lose at that point. After the hell I went through waiting for the EAAS announcement without so much as an update on what was included for 2 months, (meanwhile, big licensees got full info and even the new client months ago) and he wants to go and tell me that I’m faking my frustration? How dumb can the guy be, who wouldn’t be irritated waiting on an announcement for 2 months without even a drop of information. After he banned me he responded to my post with a load of BS knowing I couldn’t respond. I hear this is common practice for Crytek believe it or not.
So, needless to say, thank god for Epic, or there might not be an indie community at all right now. I suspect Epic’s wealth will skyrocket this year and in the years to come, and they truly deserve it for how much they’ve done for the indie community.