The long, drawn out, snail-paced legal fight between CIG and Crytek has taken one more step, but this one seems to have some direct correlation to Squadron 42 and its launch window while also adding another chapter to the drama between the two companies.
In a filing made this past Friday, Crytek asked for a voluntary dismissal – of its own lawsuit – without prejudice, which basically is asking that Crytek be allowed to dismiss the case and not be forced to pay fees until Squadron 42 is released, at which point Crytek may wish to continue to pursue litigation.
“Rather than press forward a case that is not likely to resolve the full dispute between the parties, Crytek seeks to voluntarily dismiss its claims without prejudice to re-filing once CIG in fact releases Squadron 42 as a standalone game. This approach will conserve judicial and party resources by allowing all claims between the parties to be fully adjudicated in a single proceeding with a single round of discovery on a fully developed factual record.”
This directly ties to an interrogation of CIG asking about Squadron 42’s release, which suggests that the company has no concrete plan on when the game will be live. The referenced response from CIG is blacked out, but the filing reads:
“In late November, CIG served its verified response stating that CIG had not decided how the game would be released. While this came as a surprise to Crytek (and undoubtedly will to the public who has pre-paid for Squadron 42), assuming the truth of CIG’s response, Crytek’s Squadron 42 claim is not yet ripe.”
As we’ve stated before, the most recent roadmap for Squadron 42 has only a beta release window of Q3 2020.
Our own legal-minded columnist Andy McAdams took a look over the document and helped to provide context on the possible intention of this filing, and he points out that a motion to voluntarily dismiss does not mean that Crytek is giving up the case entirely, just asking to put a hold on proceedings until a more complete case can be put together, if at all. You can get more of his rundown of the entire legal headbutting that has gone on between these two companies in this edition of his Lawful Neutral column.
