For about a year, Crytek has offered universities a free license to its CryEngine 3, the guts of this month's big release, Crysis 2. Since it made the offer more than 250 universities have asked for the code, the studio reports.
That's a pretty significant indicator of the mainstream utility of gaming code in a college classroom, if not of the mainstream presence of games design in their curricula.
"From its very first days, Crytek aimed to strongly support students and educators by sharing the CryEngine tools with universities," Avni Yerli, managing director at Crytek, said in a statement. "Thousands of students now have access to the same cutting-edge technology that the world's best developers are using for their ongoing projects. With our CryEngine 3 educational SDK we want to enable them to achieve their vision and create their very own innovation to become the next generation of developers."
You don't have to be a university department head or a bigtime developer to get your hands on Crysis' development tools. A modkit will release to all users sometime in early summer, Crytek has said.
Over 250 Universities Worldwide Signed Up For CryEngine 3 Educational License [Gamasutra]