3D Realms shuts down

[Jorpho]

Holy F*ck! I was not expecting this.

My question is, what will happen to their overpriced back catalogue of 15-year-old games? They did "spin off" the Apogee brand again a while ago - was that a last-ditch effort to save the company and secure funding?

[mnbren05]

3-D Realms introduced an entire generation of youthful gamers to the joys of throwing cash at a pixelated woman for a peep show (Just kidding). In all seriousness though no surprise here but I really wanted to someday get a crack at the Duke's long awaited game. No dice I suppose.

[Leo_A]

"I have no idea who thought that it'd be a good idea to throw Fate of Atlantis onto the Wii version of Staff of Kings, but I hope to god he gets a nice bonus or a promotion of some sort."

Which version of "Fate of Atlantis" - Action or Graphic Adventure?

There was only one, the graphical adventure game.

[Snapple]

lol anyone who thought DNF had any chance of ever being released.

Biggest con job ever: Being a programmer for 3D Realms. You put together a demo video once every three years and tell your bosses that you're working on a game when you're probably off picking your nose or playing WoW all day. And you get a paycheck!

But seriously, anyone who was still holding out hope needs to stop being so gullible. The game was never going to happen. And even if it did happen (which it wouldn't), the game probably would've sucked anyway.

[Gameguy]

There was only one, the graphical adventure game.

No, there was also an action game released at the same time. It just wasn't that popular.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/...he-action-game

I'm pretty sure it's the graphic adventure that's included with Staff of Kings, I think I saw footage of it on some site for Staff of Kings(I'm not sure of the link at the moment).

[Push Upstairs]

DNF was pretty much the last of old era vapourware, wasn't it? Team Fortress 2, Mother 3, Too Human, Chinese Democracy all were eventually released. Even Smile got an actual release.

Even "Prey" got released, and before Duke Forever.

I'm still shocked at that.

[exit]

All this talk about Duke Nukem Forever makes me believe that the series was something more than it really was. Sure the original side scrollers were fun and Duke Nukem 3D was a stepping stone in it's own right, but they weren't really anything beyond mediocre after 3D.

Sucks that 3D Realms is shutting it's doors tho, they really did help change the way people looked at games.

[roushimsx]

Even "Prey" got released, and before Duke Forever.

I'm still shocked at that.

Well the only reason that ever happened was because 3DR outsourced it to Human Head, who actually had the ability to complete games somewhat on time. For the most part, they did a pretty badass job with it, too.

[Diosoth]

Prey was something, wasn't it? 3DR licenses out the Doom 3 engine, and somehow Broussard STILL feels a need to trash iD Software for no good reason.

They should be thankful they even GOT the fucking license, after being sued over the dead Doom marine in Duke 3D years before.

Then again, people still play the original Doom and the community is strong, with numerous modern source ports available. The Duke 3D community? Little mapping going on, even fewer GOOD maps, the source ports see little development... not even the fans care anymore.

[kainemaxwell]

Update 5:49pm PST: A statement was released on behalf of Deep Silver and Apogee Software, the two companies working on Duke Nukem portable titles. "Deep Silver and Apogee Software are not affected by the situation at 3D Realms," the statement reads. "Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned." Late last year Apogee Software was launched as a sister arm to 3D Realms.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/980/98045...l?_cmpid=ign40

[Push Upstairs]

The Duke 3D community? Little mapping going on, even fewer GOOD maps, the source ports see little development... not even the fans care anymore.

I blame 3Drealms for dicking around for 12 years and letting the franchise become the joke that it is. Or maybe Duke3D was like canned lightning.

[ProgrammingAce]

A couple of us on Vbender looked through 3D Realms' history. Turns out they've only *ever* developed 2 games, Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior.

They've published a number of other titles, but I think it's fairly obvious they had no idea how to make a workflow for a modern game. Just because you can license someone's engine doesn't mean it magically becomes easy to make a game. This isn't paint by numbers.

I always got the impression that they kept licensing new engines thinking the technology would make game design easier. I think they wanted something like Game Maker for multi million dollar projects.

[Diosoth]

I blame 3Drealms for dicking around for 12 years and letting the franchise become the joke that it is. Or maybe Duke3D was like canned lightning.

They released Duke3D under GNU/open source(though possibly limited), but refused to release Shadow Warrior or the Build engine itself. Similarly, Monolith wouldn't release Blood as open source and Interplay... well, not like many people ever played Redneck Rampage anyway. So there's no Build engine general port.

And just because a company CAN buy up the property doesn't mean they'd ever touch it. Acclaim bought up Valiant Comics in the late 90s, made some decent games, then flattened the company. Someone bought up the old Valiant properties plus the Acclaim follow-ups(games, all issue reprint rights) but nothing's been done.

Not that they CAN do much... Magnus and Solar reverted to Gold Key Comics, so any reprints of the old Valiant stuff in full would require licensing of those 2 characters. They want to get Shadow Man ported to Virtual Console(it was on the N64) but they're not certain it's worth the hassle.

For comparison, Acclaim paid MILLIONS for the Valiant stuff. The current owner paid less than $200,000. It's borderline worthless without the full reprint rights.

[Jorpho]

A couple of us on Vbender looked through 3D Realms' history. Turns out they've only *ever* developed 2 games, Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior.

3D Realms very much used to be the Apogee of yore, which did develop a bunch of other things (including the original Duke Nukem sidescrollers).

I guess with the Apogee "arm" still functioning, we won't be seeing Death Rally suddenly become available for cheap. Oh well. They really ought to release their whole back catalog through Steam; Commander Keen and Wolfenstein have been selling for a lot cheaper there than they ever were through the 3D Realms store - plus they have the preconfigured DOSBox.

[j_factor]

How can they close 3D Realms without closing Apogee? Aren't they the same company?

[Jorpho]

How can they close 3D Realms without closing Apogee? Aren't they the same company?

See Mr. Kainemaxwell's post above.

[Poofta!]

wow this made me so sad. i know the joke was that duke nukem forever would never come out, but somehow deep inside i thought it eventually would. duke3d was one of my favorite games of my teens, and a game i remember very, very fondly. i remember begging my dad to buy it for me and how much i played it afterwards. the original max payne was awesome too, even though i know they werent completely responsible for that. i loved shadow warrior. in general some of my favorite DOS games from that lost era were 3drealms & apogee.

i wish them all luck, this is the 2nd development company i ever cared about going out of business (the other was Troika, and to an extent, black isle)

[Poofta!]

DNF was pretty much the last of old era vapourware, wasn't it? Team Fortress 2, Mother 3, Too Human, Chinese Democracy all were eventually released. Even Smile got an actual release.

I'm still looking forward to Gravy Trader. (bonus points for people who know)

[Kitsune Sniper]

3D Realms very much used to be the Apogee of yore, which did develop a bunch of other things (including the original Duke Nukem sidescrollers).

I guess with the Apogee "arm" still functioning, we won't be seeing Death Rally suddenly become available for cheap. Oh well. They really ought to release their whole back catalog through Steam; Commander Keen and Wolfenstein have been selling for a lot cheaper there than they ever were through the 3D Realms store - plus they have the preconfigured DOSBox.

http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/pu...gee%20Software

It's a start. Other companies have released tons of old games through GOG. I don't see why Apogee won't do the same.

[j_factor]

See Mr. Kainemaxwell's post above.

I read that link, but it doesn't really explain how 3D Realms and Apogee are separated. The only thing I can think of is that they are only closing "3D Realms" as in the development team that was working on Duke Nukem Forever, and not "3D Realms" as in the company.