Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

Cloud Imperium Games announced today that its Star Citizen and Squadron 42 games will use the Amazon Lumberyard game engine. These are two of the most ambitious games being built today, and the switch from other engines is a coup for Amazon.

Previously, Cloud Imperium Games indicated it was using the CryEngine, from Crytek. But Crytek has been having financial troubles, and the Lumberyard engine is a derivative of the CryEngine, as Amazon paid $50 million to license it so that the company could modify and build Lumberyard.

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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.