Star Citizen Switches Its Engine To Amazon Lumberyard

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Both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are now being built with Amazon's Lumberyard game engine, which is based on Crytek engine's architecture.

Funny stuff. Cloud Imperium Games previously used Crytek's CRYENGNE, but Crytek has not been immune from financial difficulties; most recently the company shut down five of their global offices. Crytek has not looked reliable for some time, so the smart move may be to start look to an equivalency: Amazon.

“We’ve been working with Amazon for more than a year, as we have been looking for a technology leader to partner with for the long term future of Star Citizen and Squadron 42,” said Chris Roberts, CIG’s CEO and creative director. “Lumberyard provides ground breaking technology features for online games, including deep back-end cloud integration on AWS and its social component with Twitch that enables us to easily and instantly connect to millions of global gamers. Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard. In fact, we are excited to announce that our just released 2.6 Alpha update for Star Citizen is running on Lumberyard and AWS.”

It's a big win for Amazon (so long as Star Citizen releases sometime soon), and I wonder if Lumberyard will encroach on Crytek's territory to the point where CRYENGINE becomes irrelevant, considering Lumberyard's additional integration with Amazon services.

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Amazon is making a strong start into the gaming world. If the company polishes their flagship titles (you can watch Omer's first impressions of Amazon's Breakaway), Amazon may become a household name as a gaming company in a few years.

Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 Gameplay Trailer