Homefront: The Revolution will be arriving in a few months, but back in 2014, its publisher Crytek was facing insolvency, and Crytek UK (formerly known as Free Radical) was affected by this financial crisis, leading to Homefront’s purchase by Deep Silver that ultimately saved the project.
Current developer Dambuster Studios studio head Hasit Zala was Crytek UK’s game director at the time. ”In the summer of 2014, Crytek ran into financial trouble. As time went on, promises went back and forth, and we got to the stage where the staff hadn’t been paid for quite some time. I was busy trying to hold the studio together, and I needed to look at its long-term future,” he related in an interview with The Guardian.
THQ originally approached Crytek UK in 2011 to make a new Homefront game, which would become Homefront 2. When shit hit the fan for THQ, Crytek purchased the Homefront IP in 2013 from the dying company for $544K. The acquisition was made during the fire sale of THQ’s properties when the publisher was going under and having its properties liquidated. A year and a half later, Homefront: The Revolution was unveiled by Crytek and Deep Silver as a co-production.
Then the rumors started. GameWatcher reported that staff at Crytek UK had handed in grievance letters that they weren’t getting paid at all, and had gone home until they received their money. This put Homefront: The Revolution and other Crytek projects at risk. ”We were a studio of 150-odd people, quite a few of whom hadn’t been paid for weeks; they had mortgages, wives and families – so over a third of the team left at that stage,” said Zala.
Wild rumors began to swirl. One said Koch Media, Deep Silver’s parent company, was up for sale. Another said Crytek would be purchased by Deep Silver. In the end, Deep Silver merely purchased the IP as Crytek shut down Crytek UK.
”Deep Silver stepped in, saying they believed in the game, believed in the team, and were really concerned with the way things were going, because it looked like the team might completely dissolve, and the game may never see the light of day. So it approached Crytek, and a buyout ensued,” Zala recalled. Dambuster Studios arose from Crytek UK’s ashes after it was shuttered.
Now, Homefront: The Revolution will finally see the light of day three years after its inception on the 20th May 2016, and what a long strange road it has been for the game and the team.
