Take-Two sues over Duke Nukem fiasco

By Ellie Gibson Published 15 May, 2009

3D Realms in the dock for failing to deliver.

Take-Two has filed a lawsuit against 3D Realms, the studio behind Duke Nukem Forever.

The game was first announced in 1997 but never appeared. Earlier this month 3D Realms closed its doors having run out of money.

Now Take-Two has filed a complaint for failure to deliver against 3D Realms, referred to as Apogee Ltd. in the legal documents. (They're separate from Apogee LLC, the studio still working on the Duke Nukem Trilogy.)

According to Bloomberg, the complaint says Take-Two paid USD 12 million for the publishing rights to Duke Nukem Forever. That was back in 2000, and a second agreement was made in 2007.

"Apogee continually delayed the completion date for the Duke Nukem Forever," the complaint states. "Apogee repeatedly assured Take-Two and the videogaming community that it was diligently working toward competing development of the PC Version of the Duke Nukem Forever."

Catch up on the whole fiasco via the gamepage.

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About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Metalfish #1 3 years ago

    Heck, if any publisher has a right to complain about tardy development....

  • PearOfAnguish #2 3 years ago

    What do they expect to get? The company is bankrupt, can they sue the directors personally?

  • Freek #3 3 years ago

    3D Realms is gone, but they were part of Apogee and they're still in business.

  • Xerx3s #4 3 years ago

    "What do they expect to get? The company is bankrupt, can they sue the directors personally? "

    The complete rights to IP's? Always a valuable thing.

  • swede #5 3 years ago

    Ha ha, love the intelligent Ad on the right hand side from shopto!

    Buy DNF now only 24.99 rrp 34.99!! Fecking bargain!

  • JensonJet #6 3 years ago

    Sounds like Take-Two were taken for a ride! Take-Two will at least get ownership of the series and everything that has been developed to date for DNF. There must be something salvageable after all these years.

    Personally I think all property and expensive possessions the directors of 3D Realms own should be sold off to partly pay for this enormous debt. Those guys are in all but name, con-artists surely? To call them incompetent is doing incompetent workers around the world a dishonour!!!

  • GreyScale #7 3 years ago

    Half of the blame has to lie on Take Two surely, for letting them get away with this for so long. I can't think of any other business in any other area where a project was still nowhere near completion after 12 years and yet allowed to continue with no questions asked.

    At best its optimistic naievety, at worse complete incompetence.

  • FooAtari #8 3 years ago

    From what I have seen of the game it didn't look to bad.

    Take two have the rights to the Duke Nukem name, no?

    They should hire all of the 3D Realms who can take the work have do so far with them, and finish the damn game.

    I have started playing DN3D again with the eduke32 engine, high res pack and Duke Nuke Plus mod. Make a lot of good changes to the game to make it feel like a sequel of sorts. More like a new version with gameplay enhancements.

  • Paper #9 3 years ago

    Interesting, I hope Take Two gets hold of the IP or assets.

  • Bravestinsane #10 3 years ago

    I forgot they were even making this game, in all fairness if Take - Two opened their eyes this wouldn't have happened in the first place.

  • Monkey_Chops #11 3 years ago

    I wish they released "the Duke Nukem Forever" before they closed their doors.

  • onyx_elite #12 3 years ago

    T2 are right to sue. Wish I could get paid millions to do sod all.

    Quote from ShopTo.net

    "If you pre-order "Duke Nukem Forever" before 12pm on 30/12/2009 we will guarantee that you will receive it by the release date of 01/01/2010, if you do not receive it we will compensate you with £3.00 on your shopto account (Terms and Conditions apply)."

    Now there's an offer worth taking up. I wonder if thats £3.00 per order cos I'll quite happily order a gazillion and never have to pay for games again ever.

  • BonzoBanana #13 3 years ago

    I bet 3Drealms were just drinking beer and playing videogames and just enjoying take two's money. Didn't Eidos get ripped off in a similar way by another famous fps developer. Can't remember the details but it cost them a lot of money and the game was total pants but at least they got a game to sell I suppose. However it was bug ridden to hell and looked like about 5 minutes work had been done on it.

    This is annoying in a way because it probably means developers will be kept on a tighter leash in future and have to finance games themselves more. So this might have a real knockon effect to developers.