Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, at GDC 2016.
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Crytek replaces CEO Cevat Yerli with his brothers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

German game developer and engine creator Crytek announced that Cevat Yerli will step down as CEO, and his brothers Avni and Faruk Yerli will take over as joint CEOs.

Cevat Yerli will continue to serve as strategic shareholder. The change follows the launch last week of the Frankfurt-based company’s bounty-hunting game Hunt: Showdown. While that went well, Crytek faces challenges with the adoption of its high-end game engine, CryEngine, which is embroiled in a lawsuit with marquee developer Cloud Imperium Games, the makers of Star Citizen. Crytek also faced much publicized cash problems in the past year where it didn’t pay employees for months and had to sell off or close studios.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.