Let’s be fair. Crytek might have assumed that Amazon would not directly license previous versions of CryEngine and only go with a full Lumberyard license and no previous versions. After all, it’s an older engine with some much newer engines out there available for use, including CryEngine V(5.4 being the latest). Why would any existing customer pay for another license of the same engine from a different company? Why would any new customer (new game) use an older engine? Again, from their perspective, it did not make sense.
Now, for better or worse, Star Citizen has been in the news a lot. I mean, not many games get mention in Forbes, Newsweek, etc. The most you might hear of them is from gaming magazines. If Star Citizen succeeded,it would be a HUGE feather in Crytek’s hat. ”look what our engine can do”. If it failed, well, that would be a botched development, not a problem with the Engine. After all, even the Alpha was very successful from an engine view. Star Citizen was a very much hoped for property designed to help lift the fortunes of Crytek. This is especially true of additional (free) development of the engine provided by CIG in the big fixes and improvements that came back to Crytek.
The loss of credit for the engine was a huge blow for them. That bruise, which must have really stung the execs, along with the logic of the first paragraph, must have really upset someone. They convinced themselves that there was something going on. Now, back when the Amazon people responded to them, the old lawyers may have tried to talk them out of it, or they saw a case where even if they won, they would not recover the monies being spent in litigation. Another group of lawyers convinced them to continue. At this time, they probably had themselves convinced that they had to win at least one point...so they could recover legal fees and to salve their pride.
anyway, the suit should (probably) never have been brought, but I am not a lawyer, so what do I know.
interestingly, Cryengine is no longer pay what you want, but a 5 percent revenue sharing model, in the case of SC, that would have meant about 13 million so far