14 DAY TRIAL // The saga of Duke Nukem Forever, which Apogee, aka 3D Realms, has been developing for the better part of 12 years, is apparently not at an end. We thought it would end when the studio announced that it was laying off most of its staff. Later, we thought it ended when Take Two sued Apogee for the money that went into the development process, on the base that the finished videogame had never been delivered.
But another weird chapter has just been written, as Apogee has filed a counter suit against Take Two, accusing the publisher of also breaching a section of the contract related to the development of Duke Nukem Forever.
On October 22, 2007, when the deal was reached, one provision of the document signed referred to revenue that Apogee was to receive from a new Duke Nukem videogame, called Duke Begins, which was supposed to be released by 2K, a subsidiary of Take Two, sometime in mid-2010.
Duke Begins was canceled and Apogee is saying that the loss of this potential revenue has made development efforts at the studio all but impossible and that it was forced to lay off the team working on the Xbox 360 version of Duke Nukem Forever, which then sparked the legal action undertaken by Take Two. In other words, it seems that Take Two’s actions led to its own material loss and 3D Realms/Apogee is at no fault. 2K Games has not commented on the supposed existence of Duke Begins.
The court filing coming from the Duke Nukem Foerever developer also states that “Apogee admits that it has continually worked on the development of the DNF for many years, and continues to do so,” which could mean that the game is still being worked on, although initial reports were saying that Duke Nukem Forever, in its current form, would never be played by gamers.