CryEngine 3 to power free to play shooter Lethal Enterprise

Newly formed New World Interactive is the latest developer to license Crytek's CryEngine 3, the technology behind Crysis 2, released earlier this year. New World plans to use the engine to create a free-to-play shooter about the drug war titled Lethal Enterprise.

New World president Jeremy Blum comes from the mod community where he produced two Mod of the Year award winners, Insurgency and Red Orchestra. Of Lethal Enterprise he said, "Besides the game being about the drug war, we don't want to reveal too much." He added that they aim to raise the bar for visual expectations of a free-to-play game.

He also addressed concerns about the team's experience, saying, "A lot of people say that mod development in nothing like AAA downloadable game development. My guess is this person never made a total conversion mod before." The release then noted that Blum came up with the concept for Red Orchestra when he was 14 years old.

On its site, New World also shows a standalone remake of Insurgency, titled Insurgency: Remastered, to be in the works. The game's page says that the original core team is on board and completely updating the game to run on the latest version of the Source engine as used in Portal 2. The game is headed to Steam in 2012.