Early this month it was announced that 3D Realms was shutting down which was then ‘confirmed’ by the webmaster Joe Siegler. This was indeed sad news as development of this game has been going on for 12 years…

On May the 14th Take-Two sued 3D Realms parent company, Apogee Software Ltd for failing to deliver on its contractual obligation to produce the game. Now there is a bit of mud slinging going on as 3D Realms hits back at Take-Two by declaring that it is not going out of business and this statement was issued by the CEO, George Broussard:
“Despite rumors and statements to the contrary, 3D Realms (3DR) has not closed and is not closing,” reads the statement. “3DR retains ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise. Due to lack of funding, however, we are saddened to confirm that we let the Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) development team go on May 6, while we regroup as a company. While 3DR is a much smaller studio now, we will continue to operate as a company and continue to license and co-create games based upon the Duke Nukem franchise.”
Now it turns out that 3D Realms has sunk over $20million of its own money into the development and its had to release its development team which is a shame. Will this game ever getting developed? I certainly hope so and would love to play it on the Xbox 360 with a nice big plasma TV and surround sound, just image that gum chewing coming from the background!

Read more about it here, quite a bit of detail and looks like a bit of a court case coming!