Founded by the Yerli brothers in Coburg in 1999 and moved to Frankfurt in 2006, Crytek operates additional studios in Kyiv, Ukraine and Istanbul, Turkey.

[3] Crytek was founded by the Turkish-German brothers Cevat, Avni and Faruk Yerli in September 1999 in Coburg, Germany.

[4] Crytek's first major game project was Engalus, a first-person shooter with a cyberpunk theme and role-playing elements, which was first privately shown at E3 2000.

[6] That same month, Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA) announced a strategic partnership to develop a new gaming franchise based on the CryEngine, which would eventually be the Crysis series.

[4] Due to this partnership, Ubisoft acquired the full rights to the Far Cry franchise by 2006 as well as a perpetual licence to the first CryEngine, which they have since adapted into their own Dunia Engine.

[7] In December 2004, Crytek and ATI created a special cinematic machinima[8] to demonstrate the future of PC gaming.

In January 2006, Crytek announced the development of Crysis, promising that it would be an original first-person shooter with a new kind of gameplay challenge requiring "adaptive tactics".

It has been licensed by many companies such as Avatar Reality, WeMade Entertainment, Entropia Universe, XLGames, Reloaded Studios.

In October 2011, Crysis was released on some consoles, allowing play of the original game via Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

[22] Crytek released Crysis 3 in February 2013[23] and Ryse: Son of Rome in November 2013 as an Xbox One launch title.

[28] In July 2021, German tabloid BILD reported that the Chinese Internet company Tencent was attempting to buy Crytek for over €300 million via a European subsidiary.

[33] On 26 January 2022 Crytek announced the fourth entry of the Crysis franchise[34], but the game was put on hold in 2025 followed by another round of layoffs.