'Star Citizen' release date, news: game switches to Amazon's Lumberyard game engine

After more than four years in development, "Star Citizen" developer Cloud Imperium Games has announced (via Polygon) that they are switching from Crytek's CryEngine game engine to Amazon's Lumberyard game engine.

"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. Lumberyard provides groundbreaking technology features for online games. Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard," studio boss Chris Roberts said in a statement.

Switching from one game engine to another doesn't necessarily mean that the game is in trouble. Aside from the fact that Cloud Imperium has been working with Amazon for over a year, Wccftech's Adrian Ip has also reported that Lumberyard is basically a rebranded version of CryEngine, so it's not like they have decided to scrap four years of development and start completely from scratch.

Furthermore, he has reached out to Cloud Imperium's Erin Roberts to ask him about the game engine switch. And according to Roberts, the change will have "absolutely no effect" on the development of the game since they don't have to alter the core engine.

Looks like development will go off without a hitch despite the change in the game engine. Cloud Imperium has also announced that the 2.6 Alpha release of "Star Citizen" is already running on Lumberyard.

The announcement came just days after Crytek decided to shut down five of its studios due to financial difficulties. Roberts Space Industries' David Swofford has said that Crytek problems would not impact the development of the game at all. "We are totally not dependent on them for anything at this point," he told Polygon.

Engadget's Jon Fingas has also noted that Cloud Imperium may have made the change so they won't have problems in the future if Crytek decides to stop its own development.

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