Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Shuts Down

Don't worry it will be back

So the SitRep is lots of people are losing their jobs and all some people can say is "take that for making your game slow!"

Unbelievably petty.

It's been a while since I posted, but given that I won this contest:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=5973863
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=10109885

I wanted to briefly reflect. I remember seeing the swag I received as a prize from him (pens, mouse pads, even Duke Nukem coasters I use with my beers to this day) and thinking the guy had a great sense of humor. How many developers can joke about milestones and release dates without their ego getting the best of them? Whatever happened behind the scenes, that doesn't take away from his interaction on here.. I always thought he was a pretty cool guy to contribute to the shacknews community even with the bad zings and stingers people would send him over the years about DNF.

There are guys out there dealing with a tough situation and I hope the best for 'em in the future.

They're gonna come out and say it was all a big joke and then announce the release date for DNF, right guys? Right?

:(

well there goes my childhood hero down the drain... what a waste. DNF or not, DN3D would/will still be my favourite game of all time.

How many of you think this is an elaborate marketing ploy by 3DRealms and will make some huge surprise at E3 on how you cant keep Duke down with a release date set sometime in the next 6 months?

3DRealms is no more. Time to reboot the Duke Nukem franchise? Or is Duke dead too?

So how does this rank in the history of videogame fuck ups?

1. Video Game Industry Crash / Atari
2. 3D Realms - DNF
3. Ion Storm - Diakatana
4. ???
5. ???

George always said that once the game goes gold everybody would know in a big way, and I'm pretty sure with this news is a pretty good way to grab and get everyones attention in a BIG way. I just hope to god this is all a joke. News of the shut down was so soon or sudden and no warning. I'd think 3D-Realms would of issued a so-long or shutting down notice for the fans, saying nothing and leaving us in the dust would alienate all of its fans. Some of their website seems to be functioning, just the frontpage is down whether from too many hits or just being removed. I hope all of us Duke Fans get our wish.

Okay guys, this economic downturn crap has officially gone too far!

I just wonder where Brandon "Green Marine" Reinhart will end up. If 3DR some persists, he'll probably stay, otherwise I'd hope for an Epic return.

There is something really fishy about this. For the last year many signs have being pointing towards completion. There was even that milestone thing (even though it didnt specify how much was completed), there was that update about the several hours of the game being playable and in playtesting back in August. There were those screenshots and the gameplay footage from the Jace Hall Show. It seems to me like it was almost finished. Also, if it was quality that 3drealms was shut down for then why did Jace Hall say the game was amazing in that interview? In my opinion, this "shutdown" is a way to market the game. E3 is in less than a month now so I'm predicting that we are being lead to believe that 3d Realms and DNF is gone, this will get DNF a lot of press (just look at about every game news site right now). But at the end of the Take-Two press thingy at E3 there will be some surprise announcement and trailer for DNF and that 3d Realms and DNF is alive and well.

i might be over simplifying this but cant 3drealms accept donations to complete this project and release it on steam with a special discount for everyone who has donated ?!!! no need for publishers or whatsoever, we have steam and direct2drive and many digital distribution methods

Well, I had given up on DNF. It was originally announced when I was going through engineering school. Since then, I finished, got a good job, played lots of video games, stopped playing video games, stopped reading the shack, started going outside, lost 80 lbs, met a women while hiking whom I came to love, turned 30, we bought a house, and lately I was thinking that I might someday play the demo of DNF with my as-yet unborn, unconceived son in about 16 years on the 10th (and final) engine choice, on the holo-display, through a mind-interface, and then burst out laughing when the first robotic frog jumped across the screen. But it looks the Duke will not be in this picture.

Alas poor Duke, I knew him Gordon Freemen.

Besides the obvious sadness of all the employees loosing their jobs, and the industry loosing yet another company - what bugs me is that we didn't see the result of all the hard work people contributed with for that title.

For all we know, it could be 80% done now.

I'll admit that I was surprised to hear this. Yes it makes sense, but it would have made even more sense to occur sometime ago. To go 12 years to just give up at this stage seems hard to believe... but, then again, I suppose the economy collapsing was the final straw for them.

I think 3DR's failure is representative of a generic problem that has plagued the industry for far too long now. It's improved significantly in recent years, but nowhere near enough:

The problem is that you have programmers and artists running multi-million dollar businesses, without any sort of business sense or ability. This is not to say, obviously, that technical/artistic people are incapable of successfully running a business... simply that having the ability to come up with and implement a successful video game does not qualify them to take on the responsibility of managing a business. It's a different skillset that is required, and when that skillset is lacking, you end up with business horror stories like this (or that id designer guy who screwed up in Texas).

A management revolution is needed in the games industry. We need to keep the technical/artistic people doing what they do best, and leave the responsibilities of business to those who know what they're doing. As we've seen, time and time again, people's jobs depend on it.

Of course, then the worry is that game designs will suffer and companies will end up churning out carbon copies of each other's (and their own) ideas over and over again (which, to an extent, IS happening already). Indeed, I think it will take a significant technological revolution before we ever really start to see widespread and consistent innovation in our game designs. I like to compare the games industry to the film industry 40-60 years ago: a handful of large corporations dominating the marketplace, and indie developers are forced to work with them if they want a large distribution (for the most part). Until ONE person, with the technical know-how, can go from start to finish on a project that can compete with the top projects released by the large corporations (i.e. an analogy might be how Tarantino came upon the film scene) then we're stuck in this stagnant cycle we have now. XLBA games (and the like) are a step towards that... but they're not competing on the same level as some of the professional titles. Even making a MOD these days, on your own (bringing along a FEW others to help with the odds and ends), simply requires FAR TOO MUCH time. Every aspect of MOD'ing needs to be available to designers/artists... coding, as it is now, needs to become a thing of the past. Imagine how many fewer Tarantino's there would be in the film world if everytime they made a new movie, they had to physically engineer the camera they were going to shoot with!

Just my opinions. RIP 3D Realms. I had been looking forward to DNF.

i did not expect this game to come out at all. clearly 3d realm gone crap like 3dfx.
4d is the new generation nooblet developers.

Independent of another the statements of employees are overlapping. Some of you may have had an eye on Georges Twitter blog (http://twitter.com/georgeb3dr). A few days ago, George of 3DR consulted Take2, to, according to Twitter, show them the game and development status (see twitterpost).
The Reason for that was, in all probability, that 3DR in spite of all inconsistencies has been BADLY(!!) needed money for completion and the payment of employees. According to a 3DR-Insider the financial crisis even hit the concern really hard, too.
According to his statement, George has needed 5 Million Dollars to get the game finished for release. T2 ask for consideration time. George Broussard and Scott Miller had been sure, that Take2, as publisher would surly put money in one of the biggest titles in game industry and has hold (confident in a positive decision of T2) a BBQ for the staff (see Twitterpost).
2 - 3 days ago, T2 reported back to 3DR with a complete different offer no one had assumed. T2 do not wanted to put further money in the duke, according to insiders, T2 doubted strongly in the finishing, do not believed George and were in between nerved by his arrogant appearance. INSTEAD(!!) and that is what probably broke 3DRs neck, 3DR could buy the publishing rights of DNF for 30 Million Dollars back.

I'm sorry, but i couldn't help laughing. The worst end for this never ending story.
But a 12 year dev time would bring every publisher to its knees i guess.

There better be something released after this, even an alpha of the completed levels or something. If I were in their shoes, if they couldn't get another publisher or funding and I had 12 years of work in a project like this, it would be released for free, get something together and give it to those who have waited for over a decade and gave the support.

NOO 3d REALMS!!! We Love your games!!!

This has to be a publicity stunt.... PLEASE PLEASE WE WANT DUKE NUKEM FOREVER!!!!!!!! SPENT HALF MY LATE TEENS EARLY TWENTIES (yes sad I know, but hey its a 3drealms title ) GROWING UP WAITING AND WAITING AND NOW THE DOOR SHUTS? WTF?!

Come on people we support 3d realms!!!!!!!!!!!

Has George posted in here yet? For whatever reason the search function doesn't work in my browser and I can't look up George3BDR.

Also, forgive me cause I'm short on time, where does this leave DNF? Has anything been said about it's continued development/cancellation?

3d Realms has had a strange and storied impact on my life.

It all started when I was in high school and my uncle asked me while watching me play Duke3d whether this is what I wanted to do with my life, make video games. It was a kind of odd and unprovoked question but one I had just never considered before. Until that point I always expected I would be some sort of mechanical engineer or something because that's a real job. It's what normal people do. The seed was planted.

Not long after that a PC Gamer cover story featured the announcement of DNF as well as a long story on Prey. I read intently about DNF, the sequel to my favorite game. The Prey story covered the technology of the Prey engine and what I read I found very interesting. Enough so that I decided I needed to look on the internet and read more about some of this graphics stuff. I got addicted.

About this same time I decided to use the handle zeroprey a mash up of Zero, a characters name from a story I liked, and Prey, the game I was most looking forward to. I've kept it ever since.

Maybe 6 months go by and I am so into graphics and game programming related reading that I decide to switch my classes from engineering related classes to programming. I apply to colleges with good graphics groups. I thankfully get into one.

I graduate HS and go off to California for school. While there I make a Doom3 renderer clone with a friend. I graduate with a BS in computer science.

With my new degree and my hobby engine I land an interview for a job in the game industry. The interview is with Human Head Studios. I have no idea what they are working on because nothing has been announced. During the interview I am shown the revived Prey they were working on with 3DR. Luckily I ace that interview and land a job as the graphics programmer on Prey.

For the next almost 2 years I work with the rest of the team to finish Prey. The working relationship with 3DR was great and I've personally yet to see better. This was quite honestly one of the best periods of my life.

After that some stuff happened that I can't talk about publicly. You can just pretend there's another interesting 3DR related paragraph. Its been almost 3 years now since Prey shipped.

R.I.P. 3D Realms. You guys should remember though that there are many arms to the 3DR beast. One of the arms died today. It's not the last you've heard of Duke or Scott and George. Hopefully the next thing you hear concerning them is something awesome! Please don't read into this as me hinting at something because I'm not.

This sucks.

DNF was a marketing scam the whole time? (http://gamingisstupid.com/2009/05/06/the-chair-story-revival/) Why haven't I heard this story yet? Written by Charlie Wiederhold, May 6th?

"The plan was actually pretty simple… create the longest developed game in history that eventually is one of the greatest games ever made. You have the time to work on it properly (no shit), so given the intelligence and talent of all the people involved, it was a pretty good bet. All 3DR had to do was make money on other stuff. All Epic had to do was open up a wide channel between the two companies. 3DR would serve as a research house for future Epic engine updates, but also give 3DR everything they did as well. The boots on the ground just had to keep the drum beating and keep the image of business as usual going. .... All we had to do was let go of the idea of just making DNF in the traditional way..."

It goes on to say that DNF was pretty much never intended to be released for decades... it was just a big fun project to keep everyone rich and distracted while other REAL projects were completed and used for funding. Is any of this true or just crackpot stuff?

HERE ARE THE INSIDER INFOS (CAN SOMEBODY TRANSLATE GERMAN?)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Leute, inzwischen sickern die ersten News von ehemaligen Angestellten von 3DR sowie von Take2 Mitarbeitern durch. Ich fasse nun mal die erschütternde Nachricht zusammen warum 3DR wirklich pleite ist.

Unabhängig voneinander überschneiden sich die Aussagen der Mitarbeiter. Manche haben sicher auch den Twitterblog von George verfolgt (http://twitter.com/georgeb3dr). George von 3DR ist vor ein paar Tagen an Take2 herangetreten um ihnen laut Twitter das Game und den Entwicklungsstatus zu zeigen(siehe twittereintrag). Der Grund dafür ist sehr wahrscheinlich gewesen, dass 3DR trotz aller Widersprüche anscheinend DRINGEND(!!) Geld brauchte für die Fertigstellung und Bezahlung der Angestellten. Laut einem 3DR-Insider hat die Finanzkrise wohl auch stark bei diesem Konzern eingeschlagen. George brauchte laut seiner Aussage 5 Millionen US Dollar um das Spiel Release fertig zu bekommen, T2 bittet um Bedenkzeit. George Broussard und Scott Miller waren sich sicher, dass Take2 als Publisher sicher Geld in einen der größten Titel der Gameindustrie stecken würde und veranstalteten (siegessicher vor der Entscheidung von T2) ein BBQ für die Mitarbeiter der Firma (siehe Twittereintrag).
Vor 2-3 Tagen hat sich T2 bei 3DR gemeldet und ein ganz anderes Angebot unterbreitet mit dem niemand gerechnet hat. T2 wollte kein Geld in den Duke stecken, laut Insider zweifelte T2 stark an der Fertigstellung und glaubte George nicht und waren inzwischen auch genervt von seinem arroganten Auftreten, STATTDESSEN(!!) und das hat 3DR wohl das Genick gebrochen, könnte 3DR die Rechte am Vertrieb für DNF von T2 für 30 Millionen US Dollar zurück kaufen.

"Take2 declined to give them $5 million to keep developing the game and actualy tried to sell the publishing rights back to 3DR."

Damit hatte keiner bei 3DR gerechnet und das Unheil hat seinen Lauf genommen. Anfang letzten Monats soll 3DR schon nicht mehr flüssig gewesen sein.
Es sieht so aus als wenn George einfach zu hoch gepokert hat und sich sicher war, dass der Titel allein genug zieht um nochmal Geld locker zu machen.


It seems to be real. George this is so lame.

to 3D realms, thanks for trying to put that game out - Serious sam will replace the void left - Let's move on - peace

DUKE! DUKE! DUKE!

Its the only "All American" Game and my time spent reading tidbits about it and how it will be above awesome, above spectacular...all that and now this...

Economy crashing, swine flu, now 3d realms closing... this already has been a sad year. No disrespect of course to swine flu sufferers. Get Well and Get 3d realms back!

This is like, the worst fucking news ever.
I've believed in Duke Forever for fucking 10 years now. I didn't even believe in Santa Claus that long.
This is fucking traumatic. FUCK

I haven't checked in since this morning.

Anything new?

The buck stops with the management @ 3DRealms. After 10+ years there is almost nothing to show for their product. It is not the developers fault... especially if what I have read about them having to contrantly scrap and rework the same maps over and over again because someone in management kept stopping progress.

If there is a problem you fix it. I can't belive this game could not have come out in 10+ years. 10+ YEARS. The people who are payed to make the decisions apparently didn't and the company bled dry. Nobody knows how complete the game is. 10%? 50%? 90%? It's all speculation because little has been shown.

And I doubt we will see anything now because if the game was still not near completion it would make the people in charge a laughing stock.