Crytek opens first U.S. studio, headed by ex-Vigil staff

Are they making an MMO?

Crytek will move into Austin, Texas for development on future titles, landing the international company in North America for the first time.

“Crytek has always enjoyed a special relationship with gamers and business partners in North America, so establishing a permanent presence in the US was a natural step,” Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said, in a press release.

The studio will be overlooked by Vigil Games co-founder David Adams and joined by 35 employees.

With Crysis 3, free-to-play shooter Warface, Kinect-enabled Ryse, and Homefront 2 in development across Crytek’s nine studios, Crytek Austin could be working on anything. I speculate Crytek may be venturing into the MMO space, granted its flirtations with F2P in Warface and Austin’s current development pool of laid off, MMO-savy Vigil and Bioware staff.

Or maybe, Crytek will buy the rights and take the reigns on Darksiders and Red Faction (which Jason Rubin said are yet to be auctioned.), and Crawler, the game Vigil was working on before closure.

Or, even more likely, Crytek is planning on world domination which would explain the opening of Crytek Istanbul a scant 10 days ago. Now is the time to get cyber-implementations and a bad ass crossbow, people.