Never Bet on Duke
May. 8th, 2009 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofeleven“3D Realms, the developers behind Duke Nukem Forever, has shut down.”
Wow.
Hard to believe, really. There’s a Dinosaur Comic up today, and T-Rex pretty much sums up my feelings. Duke Nukem Forever was announced before I even got my first computer – I’ve been vaguely anticipating it the whole time I’ve been gaming.
It’s always been a weird situation, and I am looking forward to the full story eventually coming out of what the hell was going on in 3D Realms for the last ten years. They weren’t releasing games, most of the time they didn’t even seem to be pretending to be working on Duke Forever, and most of their money must have been coming from licensing their old brands. Despite not actually developing a game themselves since ‘97s Shadow Warrior – which was outdated before it even came out – they somehow managed to keep publishing a fair number of titles – decently successful stuff like Prey and Max Payne. If they managed to stay afloat for as long as they did, despite not actually releasing anything, with their brand name practically a punchline for years – it’s hard to believe they’d ever be forced to close up shop. And hell, for the last year or so, it did actually look like they were working on the game – the screenshots and videos they were providing looked pathetic, but it was a break in the near-total silence that had been their MO for most of this decade…
I’m going to mourn their passing by replaying all the Commander Keen games tonight.
Edit: For reference, so I can find this again later - A Penny Arcade strip on DNF... from 1999.
Wow.
Hard to believe, really. There’s a Dinosaur Comic up today, and T-Rex pretty much sums up my feelings. Duke Nukem Forever was announced before I even got my first computer – I’ve been vaguely anticipating it the whole time I’ve been gaming.
It’s always been a weird situation, and I am looking forward to the full story eventually coming out of what the hell was going on in 3D Realms for the last ten years. They weren’t releasing games, most of the time they didn’t even seem to be pretending to be working on Duke Forever, and most of their money must have been coming from licensing their old brands. Despite not actually developing a game themselves since ‘97s Shadow Warrior – which was outdated before it even came out – they somehow managed to keep publishing a fair number of titles – decently successful stuff like Prey and Max Payne. If they managed to stay afloat for as long as they did, despite not actually releasing anything, with their brand name practically a punchline for years – it’s hard to believe they’d ever be forced to close up shop. And hell, for the last year or so, it did actually look like they were working on the game – the screenshots and videos they were providing looked pathetic, but it was a break in the near-total silence that had been their MO for most of this decade…
I’m going to mourn their passing by replaying all the Commander Keen games tonight.
Edit: For reference, so I can find this again later - A Penny Arcade strip on DNF... from 1999.
