Crytek signed a licensing deal with Amazon which helped it to get through its recent financial difficulties, claims a new report.

Kotaku claims that the ecommerce giant paid between US$50 million and US$70 million to license Crytek's CryEngine. Kotaku's sources said Amazon will use CryEngine as a "baseline to build their own proprietary gaming engine."

The sources added that it was the Amazon agreement that helped Crytek to keep its doors open after financial difficulties became so dire at the company that it was unable to pay its staff salary owed.

In July 2014, Crytek said a strategic shift was responsible for its financial difficulties, but that extra funding had been secured that would see the studio prosper in the long term.

“Like the games industry as a whole, Crytek has been in a transitional phase," said the company in a statement at the time. "Our evolution from a development studio to an Online-Publisher has required us to refocus our strategies."

"Ultimately, with our organisation, capitalisation, portfolio and technologies we have now laid the foundations for securing Crytek's future – not just in the short term, but also long term," it said.

Amazon has recently shown plenty of interest in the gaming space. In August last year, the company bought streaming service Twitch for US$970 million.

In April 2014, Amazon unveiled Fire TV, an Android-based set-top box that plays games and supports video streaming.