The tangled lawsuit between Gearbox Software, 3D Realms, and Interceptor has been voluntarily settled by all parties, with Gearbox retaining all rights to Duke Nukem. It’s still not clear when they will make another Duke game, though — or whether they even should.
The announcement came in the form of a post on Gearbox’s website. It includes statements from all involved parties, including the CEO of 3D Realms, Mike Nielson:
When Interceptor acquired a license to develop ‘Duke Nukem Mass Destruction’ (‘Duke Nukem Survivor’) from 3D Realms, we did so in good faith and were not aware of any conflict. We never intended to cause any harm to Gearbox or Duke, which is why we immediately ceased development after Gearbox reached out.
To secure the future of Duke, 3D Realms has agreed with Gearbox that a single home serves the IP best. And as big Duke fans, we’re excited to see what Gearbox has in store for the ‘King.’ As for our own games, we’re eager to complete development of the ‘Bombshell’ game and get it in the hands of our fans.
After years of waiting for a resolution, Gearbox stated it wanted to keep the terms of the agreement secret.
Comments
18 responses to “The Lawsuit Between Gearbox Software, 3D Realms, And Interceptor Has Been Settled”
To be honest, a Duke game with what they have with borderlands would have been perfect. Overly manly lines from Duke + a annoying sidekick + shooting aliens with skills that would make Duke even more manly with manly takedowns, American football dash.
Isn’t that kinda what Duke Nukem Forever was?
Nope sadly because it wasn’t fully made by gearbox
It was released like six months after they officially acquired it, so it had very little in the way of work done on it by gearbox.
Yeah 🙁 All they did was make it into playable state and sell it.
For a certain value of “playable”
I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and know of many, many people who also did. It could have been better, but damn it was funny, and pretty darn good.
I played it through (pre-ordered, even!) and while it was refreshing to play a modern but old-school shooter, it was too bloated to feel fun. A 40 second loading time every time you died (on console) tipped it over from ‘meh’ shooter to ‘grarghh’ territory for me.
Now that sounds like something I’d like, though one of the winning factors of Borderlands has always been co-op. How would you co-op Duke? Either you’d all be fighting to play as Duke, or fighting not to be.. so who would you have? Duke.. Duke-ess.. Dukino?
http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Dukino
Duke, like Serious Sam, is very much a solo character. In Sam, everyone gets to play as Sam and it doesn’t impact on the story, but its also very much the same. Get guns shoot things. In many ways, Sam is what Duke should have been. If you’re going to add skills into it, you’d need to be able to diversify somehow to make it more fun to play with others…..
I think it’d be a tricky thing to pull off.
Clones man, clones…
Or… alternate timelines… Duke from the future with his cybernetic organisms and hieroglyph Duke with his mystical powers from the sun….. and for #4 we’ve got to have transgender Duke from modern day Thailand, not sure what special abilities could be had here, can’t be worse than a playable Claptrap right?
Hahaha, your killing me man!
If I had all the resources, I’d love to see an open world style Duke game.
Think GTA V first person mode, but in a futuristic LA where the cops are aliens and the civilians are a combination of human slaves and whacky alien civilians. Have Saints Row style objectives and Duke at the helm wandering around interacting with the environment and saying offensive things.
It’d be the best game ever in the right hands. I think that outside of Rockstar, Gearbox would be the only other studio I’d half expect to pull it off.
Damn, I misread it as “returning all rights” and got excited. I was kinda looking forward to Interceptor’s game.
Certainly more than I am any future Duke game outta Gearbox. I have no respect for them.
Not after the complete lack of respect they put towards the Aliens licence. Not after Randy “The fuckface” Pitchford stared straight down that camera and implied that DNF was going to be good at all.
Borderlands 2 wasn’t even that good. It was the same desolate “boring but I’m having fun” affair that Borderlands 1 was, except it had what was without hyperbole one of the worse characters ever – Tiny Tina. I only played it because my friends wanted to.
It was a far cry from all those 9/10s and 10/10s it received.
Note: last paragraph was opinions, not facts
I mostly agree. I actually think that DNF was better than people give it credit for, though. It wasn’t amazing, but I enjoyed playing through it for the most part. There were only a few sections that I truly disliked, so… 6-7/10 in my book, not the 3-4/10 most people seem to rate it as.
I don’t really think it’s fair to blame Gearbox for DNF being mediocre, either, considering the story behind the game.
But what happened with Colonial Marines was unforgivable. And every Borderlands game being so similar isn’t something I’m really a fan of. I liked the first one, played it until I was bored of it, bought Borderlands 2 and was bored of it instantly because it was the same damn game.
Gearbox are one of those game companies that I’ve always really, really wanted to like. But doing so at this point is almost impossible. The best thing I can say about them is that “they made a couple of reasonably competent games several years ago.” …Not exactly a sterling endorsement.
I agree about DNF. It wasn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t great either.
I think that after such a long wait, regardless of the state is was released in, there’s no way it would live up to people’s expectations or fond memories of Duke 3D.
I felt the same way about DNF, mostly. Dunno about 7, but I’d be happy with a 6. When Jim Sterling gave it a 2/10, I had to disagree.
But at the end of the day, Gearbox DID put it out. I think they did it for the being able to say that they did it, and not for any good reason.
All I can really say for Gearbox is “they did that really good Half-Life expansion everyone likes” but I’d be surprised if any of those Gearbox employees are the same as the current Gearbox employees.
Problem is if Gearbox make another Duke they will need to make a TRULY EPIC game otherwise it will hurt their image so much it wouldn’t be worth it.
They should take a few hints from the Shadow Warrior developers, that was a decent reboot.