Crytek Boss Defends Unlawful Firing Allegations

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We heard it with Team Bondi and now something similar has arisen in regards to Crysis developer, Crytek.

The drama started with a Tumblr blog entitled Hire and Fire Crytek; the post accuses the studio in question of treating its employees "as disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will." It also went on to describe - in some detail - how Crytek management unlawfully fired employees and squeezed out senior executives who could be replaced by cheaper, less experienced people. Finally, the blog claims some ex-employees have sued the company and won.

But unlike Team Bondi, which never responded to allegations and simply broke apart, Crytek boss Cevat Yerli offered an explanation:

"One thing that will always be the same is that Crytek respects and values its employees very highly, and equally--that's very important. Whether it's an intern, whether it's a director, it doesn't change; everyone is important. It is very distressing for us to think that an individual thinks we have been treating them unfairly. It's very disappointing."

As for those supposed lawsuits that ex-employees won, Yerli claims that didn't really happen and explained a bit about a worker's mindset in Germany. It's not that they "won" anything, it's that the employees believe they deserved more and sued for more.

"Well in Germany it is common sense, if you release someone, sometimes they get bad legal advice and basically think they can make unreasonable requests like huge severance packages. What we offered them they clearly didn't like but it was more than legally required. So they go to court and ask for much more, but in the end they end up getting less or what we offered in the first place, and just go through the pain [of the whole legal process]. 'Won' the lawsuits isn't the right term. I don't want to make glory out of this. We are not proud of 'winning.' This is something sad that happened between us and people we used to work with. We haven't been found to have unlawfully fired these people, but we don't want to go to court with our co-workers either."

Well, Cevat, that doesn't sound much different than the way things are here. In defense of businesses that have to deal with this every day, there's a widespread belief that employees are entitled to a lot more than they're worth. This jams up the court systems and makes things miserable for business owners, especially small business owners. This misplaced sense of entitlement is pretty huge in the US right now, Mr. Yerli. You aren't alone.

Tags: crysis 2, crytek, crysis, game industry

9/7/2011 10:32:56 AM Ben Dutka

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